Google, Microsoft Escalate Data Center Battle

miller60 writes "The race by Microsoft and Google to build next-generation data centers is intensifying. On Thursday Microsoft announced a $550 million San Antonio project, only to have Google confirm plans for a $600 million site in North Carolina. It appears Google may just be getting started, as it is apparently planning two more enormous data centers in South Carolina, which may cost another $950 million. These 'Death Star' data centers are emerging as a key assets in the competitive struggle between Microsoft and Google, which have both scaled up their spending (as previously discussed on Slashdot). Some pundits, like PBS' Robert X. Cringley, say the scope and cost of these projects reflect the immense scale of Google's ambitions."

Hmm... It's Slashdot so...

Microsoft's is to run Vista. While Google's is to save the world.

Re:Hmm... It's Slashdot so...

I knew Vista's hardware requirements were high, but a $550,000,000 data center?

Re:Hmm... It's Slashdot so...

Don't worry. You don't need to spend that much if you turn down the quality settings.

Re:Hmm... It's Slashdot so...

This is Windows, so the only quality setting available would be zero.

No they both need those data centers

Google needs a $600 million data center to serve its 300 million daily users, while Microsoft needs its $550 million data center to serve both of it's MSN Live Search users.

As long as it doesn't violate GPL

As long as it doesn't violate GPL (and it does not), I'm fine with Google not releasing their stuff to the masses. Nearly every big Linux shop has their own tweaked version of Linux kernel, so it's not like they're evil or something.

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

Would you prefer Google not exist at all or be forced to strike some deal with Microsoft?

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

Funny how lots of other software companies manage it. Google has a lot of smart people, who get paid to code, it's not like it's just some guys who do it for fun in their spare time. Presumably they don't mess with the kernel or anything, and can just upgrade the same as everyone else, maybe with minor tweaks to their own code. And I seriously doubt Google is making less money than it spends, considering it's building $1,500,000,000 worth of data centres. Would you really like it if spammers could view Google's source to learn more about PageRank and scwew awound with your search results?

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

It just seems to defeat the open source nature of Linux when you branch in a private way that avoids community code review and source code sharing.

If it's against the spirit, then why was private code-branching specifically allowed by the GPL? Isn't freedom to run your code as you see fit a big part of freedom?

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

"It just seems to defeat the open source nature of Linux when you branch in a private way that avoids community code review and source code sharing."

It's obvious that you've not grokked GPL itself.

The GPL covers distribution. No distribution = do whatever you want with the code.

You forget that Google loses the power of peer review for their code, but that's the tradeoff. Having a lot of really smart people in their employ probably makes up for it. So they've got their own branch. They have to do their own heavy lifting.

If you remove the freedom to work on Linux in-house, then you've removed one of the freedoms _allowed_ by the GPL.

--
BMO

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

I don't think it's a violation just as long as they keep it in house. Which means they also have to support it in house. Not everyone is willing to keep on retainer kernel developers for their employee desktop computers.

Google is changing the way people do business on the internet. They are also going to change the shape of the internet. Much of this very likely will follow any of a number of historical industrial patterns which eventually lead to severe regulations and a severe restriction of who is allowed to post information on the internet and what kind of information you are allowed to receive on the internet. It is not necessarily true that the regulators will dictate the limits of content but simply reinforce the idea of limiting content.

Examine the history of Television and Radio to see how they followed this path. I don't think anyone really considers the internet that much different. At least they can get it to fit the model. With the exception of the social webs like facebook, youtube, and myspace, most of the internet consists of content delivery and a large portion of that content (by some) is seen not as written words but media in forms of video/audio material. And with the highly publicized problems that these social networks are having (where everyone is a pedophile or worse) it's ripe for all the sheeple to cry out that they need the guberment to protect them from their neighbors. And "bang!". Just like that you have a completely "owned" environment where no one can actually do anything, everything costs money, and the sheeple are happy again.

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

Tailoring software to your own use is not branching. It's just using. A "private branch" is a contradiction in terms. Perhaps it could be called a "private bud", because such a modified version could become a branch. But if it can not attract users and developers, it's not a branch.

The question of the "spirit" of FOSS is profound though. Underneath the license, there are two related principles, a negative one (do not interfere with the rights of an object code recipient) and a positive one (share knowledge). The question that arises is this: should these principles apply to users of services built around the object code? There doesn't seem to be a fundamental reason why such rights are granted to people who receive the object as object code, but not people who are equally if not more affected.

I think the answer may hinge on this: of the two principles, non-interference and sharing, the sharing principle is less strong.

Users of a service created by a vendor like Google are not supposed to have the power to change that service. Otherwise it would be impossible to offer a service before its users redefined it into the oblivion of inconsistency. Google gets to define the service and control it. Not allowing users to change the service (via the source code it runs on) is not interference, because the service would not exist if any user could change the source code on a whim (Wikipedia perhaps being a related counterexample).

But if the sharing principle were equally strong Google would be obligated to share the source code of any changes it made with its users, even if they were not allowed to alter the services they depend on.

This argument leads to the conclusion that sharing must be less of a fundamental value to FOSS than it is "instrumental" to the value of non-inteference. If you control source code to object code somebody else depends on, you can interfere in their freedoms (e.g. proprietary database licenses that forbid publishing benchmarks).

This may make some sense. In engineering, the most important piece of knoweldge is usually that something can be done. In this case, the changes Google has made are probably (1) stripping unneeded features out and (2) tweaks that are highly Google specific. The first is something that any reasonably competent engineer can do, the second is probably not critical to any would be competitors amongst Google's users.

Control over source code is reaching, via the laws of copyrights and contracts, into the affairs of object code recipients. Non-sharing of know-how is something every business does to some degree; it is more difficult to draw the line between vicious and innocuous secretiveness than it is between vicious and innocuous interference.

Non-local computing

The aim for both of these giants is to shift people towards non-local computing, that is software and applications that run remotely rather than on someone's own computer.

Early signs of this beyond the obvious google applications that require web access, are aggressive attempts by Microsoft to "activate" everything online. You are going to increasingly need network connections to run standard applications.

I don't like that myself, since it hurts reliability and autonomy in computing. From a marketing perspective, there are huge benefits to centralized computing of course. Take gmail for instance, which lets google mine your private communications to gain insight into products and services which might interest you.

Re:Non-local computing

The aim for both of these giants is to shift people towards non-local computing,

I thought the aim was to prove which one had the larger penis?

I don't like that myself, since it hurts reliability and autonomy in computing. From a marketing perspective, there are huge benefits to centralized computing of course. Take gmail for instance, which lets google mine your private communications to gain insight into products and services which might interest you.

On a serious note. While I don't care all that much if google uses an automated method to push advertising on me, I am more bothered by the fact that it's a single target that retains tons of information. A hacker can break into one person's home computer and get their info, or they can break into a google server and have 2 million people. Same reason that hackers target windows/ie over linux/firefox, they can accomplish/demolish a larger audience.

Re:Non-local computing

A hacker can break into one person's home computer and get their info, or they can break into a google server and have 2 million people.

I'd be more worried about a rogue government or future government deciding
they want to mine that data to find out who all the "terrorists" are.

Oh, wait ...

Rich.

Re:Non-local computing

Microsoft desperately needs new datacenters because their search index size is in need of an increased capacity. Google with its 100000++ computers is able to record every single click-through, record your chats, store your email for posterity (even after you delete it), store every single search query for several years, record your online transactions etc. not only on its own sites but other sites like slashdot for example. This has helped improve their search result and provide targetted ads among other things. Microsoft's search now algorithmcally matches Google. It now does a great job for most queries, but for some esotoric queries its small index size is very apparent.

Re:Non-local computing

Early signs of this beyond the obvious google applications that require web access, are aggressive attempts by Microsoft to "activate" everything online. You are going to increasingly need network connections to run standard applications.

I don't like that myself, since it hurts reliability and autonomy in computing.

If all else is equal, a centralized approach is less reliable than a distributed approach.

But seldom is all else equal.

A distributed approach to software and information systems often has catastrophic failure as part of the mix. A well-designed central approach, with built-in redundancy and a qualified backup scheme can usually outperform the poorly administered "edge" systems run by end users.

And, in this space, the economies of scale rapidly factor in, making a better experience cheaper, as well. Sorry you don't trust the hosting providers, but it isn't always that way...

Re:Non-local computing

I don't like that myself, since it hurts reliability and autonomy in computing.

Don't worry, you can trust skynet. What could go wrong?

Data security nightmare

If it isn't the hackers trying to break into your system, it's Google's marketing partners getting exclusive access to your communications.

Forget that, I'd rather have my own mail server at home, not to mention my own apps at home. I don't even trust ISP's.

This "offsite word processing" crap is for chumps - anyone with sensitive data would be utter idiots to go there.

Good in the short term

For the time being, it's surely a good thing if two extremely wealthy companies pour resources into creating ultra-high capacity facilities such as these, particularly as Google's business model is based around providing services which are nominally 'free' (in terms of dollars) and as such these resources are in a sense an investment in our common infrastructure. If we're really lucky Google and Microsoft will hugely over-invest, and one day find themselves with a large overcapacity which third parties might be able to use for their own work.

However, longer term things may not be so appealing. Both companies have a nasty habit of collecting and storing as much personal data as possible (Google in particular), and both are pushing towards 'lock out' where you are prevented from using your own computer without their participation via connection to their networks. And of course the software industry has a history of producing only one winner in the end, meaning the benefits of this kind of head-to-head competition are unlikely to last...

Re:Good in the short term

From my point of view, there'll be no single winner, but technology will revert once again, and the term 'computer' will mean what it meant in the 60s and the 70s. Provided enough bandwidth, stability and solutions like roof-top server rooms - Google [or Microsoft, although it's hard for me to believe it] has good chances to build such a network with powerful data centers and relatively dumb clients. Again, the task is not easy, and there is 1001 reasons why, but defying laws of physics isn't among them, and the Almighty Buck will surely help solve all of them sooner or later.

If we're really lucky Google and Microsoft will hugely over-invest

Why? Google's desperately trying to diversify its income sources, why don't you suppose that they'll offer hosting services because they plan to?

and i quote

These 'Death Star' data centers are emerging as a key assets in the competitive struggle between Microsoft and Google

That's no zune...

Death Star independent contractors

A construction of a real Death Star data center would require a lot more manpower than Google or Microsoft has to offer. I bet there are independent contractors working all over these things: plumbers, carpenters, electricians, DBAs, MBAs, roofers, etc. In order to get one built quickly and quietly they'd have to hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average Google employee knows how to install a toilet main? All he knows is JavaScript and Knuth.

All these independent contractors in each Death Star data center are getting involved in a war between Microsoft and Google- a war they had nothing to do with.

Re:Speaking as an independent contractor myself

This needs a rewrite:

I'm an engineer, and I can tell you that an engineer's politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs. Just three months ago I was offered a job working at one of the big information companies data centers, in a vast facility. And then I learned how screwed up the company's plans were. The money was right, but the risk was too big. So I passed the job onto a friend of mine.

While writing a C# script for some part of thier web portal my friend was hit by a flying chair, it was a leathal blow, and he died instantly. I'm still employed because I recognized the risks involved in working in a Death Star. Anyone working in a Death Star data center for Google or Microsoft is aware of the risks involved in that war. Whatever happens to them is their own fault.

Time to invest

On Thursday Microsoft announced a $550 million San Antonio project, only to have Google confirm plans for a $600 million site in North Carolina.

It looks like it's time to invest in IBM, Red Hat, Maxtor, and Intel. They may sell a lot of hardware and software.

Ecological nightmare

So now we know why the sky is always black with pollution in sci-fi movies... we cover the earth with multi-gigawatt eating data centers.

Since electricity is a continent-wide commodity you can guess whose electric bill will be going up as they buy up all the watts just so they can store every little detail about your life.

ObStarWars

These 'Death Star' data centers are emerging as a key assets...

Better make sure to protect the plans for that data center...one well placed shot in an exhaust vent could take out the whole thing. Not much harder then hitting a womp rat with a T-16, from what I hear...

Death Stars

FX: Guard on gate waves hand mysteriously 'This isn't the Data Complex you're looking for'

Telling name

With the doomsday clock at 11:55 they decided to code name the sites Ground Zero One, Two and Three. Helpful GPS coordinates can be found at their competitors websites. Google has nice aerial shots of the Microsoft location with coordinates in Russian, Farsi and Korean. Microsoft is offering a special GPS Zune with preloaded coordinates to the Googel sites. Ain't competition grand!

I don't beleive in server side applicatons yet

Microsoft wants to get as much money as possible from applications and "special features" running of their data centers. The thing is both Google and Microsoft are "jumping too far" in the future with this if they want to tie average consumer to their server side applications. Why ? Most of the people still don't have network connection fast enough to support this kind of Internet applications. Evolution is going this way but it can't happen before large numbers of people get optical cables to their homes. Bandwidth,is the key. Most of the people are used to get very rich programs from their computers already. Right now this kind of applications can run only from computers and local-home servers. This evolution already started with game consoles, smart phones, tablets with wifi support etc connected with home PC .

My point is don't worry about applications running strictly from servers. Microsoft might try to tie your application on them to make sure you bought your program and keep track of your application(but who cares I use Linux)..Google ?? Something much more then email or something similar to ftp program for storing large amounts of data won't work. PLEASE UPLOAD ONLY FILES SMALLER THEN 5 MB AND MAKE SURE YOU INCLUDE AS MUCH VITAL INFORMATIONS ABOUT YOU AS POSSIBLE ?? :)))

First you need natural demand for this kind of applications and this demand doesn't exist yet because of low average bandwidth people have.

ON THE END THIS TREND EXISTS AND IT IS A THREAT TO PERSONAL FREEDOM. If you really want to stop this uncontrolled server side applications in the future AND THAT COULD AND WILL HAPPEN support applications like eyeOS that I recently installed or other open source server side applications that you could install on home servers and see and control your CODE.

Maybe

Maybe it's time for MS to give up on the search thing because they have spent mega $$$ and still suck at it. maybe it's time for MS to stop trying to compete with everyone and just focus on what they do well: OS'es and Office Suites, and use war chest money to defend that area like no one else has ever seen, and not waste money on things that aren't their core focus, never will be their core focus and just realize they will suck at it until the end of days until they make such a thing their core focus at the expense of their core products. Why bother being all things to all people, when you can't really do all those things that well?

It's time for MS to stop with all this data center crap and trying to compete with Google. MS can only compete with Google if they make search their priority at the expense of everything else they do. And whatever they do, they will *never* be as good at what Google does.

Time to retrench and think up ways of holding the desktop and office markets, besides pumping out crapware every few years that no one cares about, but has to eat anyway. If they have to eat it, why not make the meal pleasant and amazing? Household licensing for both Vista Business and Office 2007 for $95 per PC if bought in lots of 5 for the home user? I'd be all over the suite like white on rice, and so would most people.

And then MS could claim that their Always On OS/Productivity Suite doesn't require an internet connection to work, and that would be their selling point. No point in competing against Google on Google's terms.

Location, Location, Location

Instead of warm locations like Texas and Carolina Why don't they build these datacentres near the Arctic circle, like Alaska and reduce the need for cooling?

I'm sure that with remote administration they'd only need a few guys wearing thermal underwear to press the reset button or to swap out servers physically :-)

I've figured it out...

Google is building Colossus and Microsoft is building Guardian.

We're hosed. Don't buy any real-estate on Crete.

--
BMO

Next gen...

I think "Next gen" is the next gen of "super" or something...

South Carolina FTW

I called the South Carolina situation about a year ago. SC has cheap land and power plus an OC-192 goes through Columbia to the University of SC(the first USC, sorry Alumnus). I just figured no one would do it because the schools are so bad no one would move there. I wonder what kind of jobs these Data Centers employ.

Moving East

As someone from the East coast (not the LEFT coast), I am glad to see more investments this direction. I have thought for a long time that way too much goes to CA, WA, and TX, and more should come East, and especially to the depressed (since 1865) South. As a grad of a Southern school who had to move to the DC area for a good job, more jobs in the SE can only help the situation.

Does anyone else worry about hurricanes?

Am I the only one who thinks building a data center in North Carolina only invites eventual destruction by hurricane? Granted, Google's applications are globally balanced and distributed, but it seems somewhat high risk.

Then again, data centers in CA and other west coast locations have the risk of earthquake destruction. Difference is earthquakes seem to occur once every few years to couple of centuries. Hurricanes (especially with global warming) seem to happen annually, with a major one causing east coast damage at least once per decade.

There's always Arizona, where the only major risk is A/C failure causing a total data center melt down in the middle of August.

Incentives to Build

Is anyone else a bit weirded out by the massive incentives the local governments have offered. I know this is nothing new, and the locals hope that these will spur further high-tech development in the area, but let's examine these cases:

San Antonio (Microsoft) [mysanantonio.com]: No property taxes for 10 years. A $5.2 mil grant from the CPS Energy economic development fund to pay for the electrical infrastructure to build the site.

South Carolina (Google) [valleywag.com]: No property taxes for 30 years (essentially, for the life of the site). The 150-acre site was granted to them, and the state government has granted about $5 mil [yahoo.com], too. Google has been incentivized to the tune of about $100 million.

Some of the structural construction will undoubtedly be done by locals. The technical work of building the data center (installing servers, wiring everything together) is probably outside of a local construction company's expertise. The real bulk of all those hundreds of millions of dollars goes to purchasing the actual computer equipment, none of which is local. A handful of the most-well-educated locals could be employees, but most employees will be transplanted. In less than 10 years, both sites will probably be obsolete (or, worse, axed as excess capacity). As the article on Google's site notes, the obscene incentives equate to "a $500,000 sweetener for each of the 200 jobs Google will create."

For half a million dollars, I'm sure the local economy could get more bang for its buck than just one Google employee. What exactly are these local governments getting in return for their obsequiousness and prostration?

Jobs!

All I have to say is COOL!

By Google building these things out in the sticks I might actually be able to work someplace cool but not have to pay crazy cost of living $$$$.

Now if I could only get up the confidence to endure the google "hazing" interview process.

Google is way ahead already

From what I can tell, Google is already way ahead of MS on datacenters. To me, Google has already planned out its whole strategy on data centers. Microsoft seems to be in the "me too" phase right now and haven't thought about the whole picture beyond of building a data center.

First of all, how is Microsoft going to connect its data center(s)? Google quietly bought obscene amounts of dark fiber capacity. There was rampant speculation as to why Google was doing that and now we know. I haven't heard MS doing anything like this.

Second, what is Microsoft going to run software-wise? MS has to eat its own dog food, while Google has options. Google has probably wrote its own but only due to neccessity. Their software can be highly optimized. Microsoft has to use Microsoft whether it is right for the job or not.

This new data center isn't Google first large one and it appears not the last. I don't know whether MS has other ones planned as well.

Patching Center

A $550,000,000 patching center and $600,000,000 pr0n center. Who said the Internet was dead?

Re:Bang for the Buck? Microsoft is in big trouble.

You dont think Google has broken the 'corruption barrier' a few years ago?

They basically can track you as you surf if they wanted to.
If they arent corrupt now then they probably arent going to be corrupted.

Re:It's a trap.

I'm looking forward to buying one of these datacenters cheap on the used market, so I can run emacs with all the eye-candy switched on.

Re:It's a trap.

Not sure why the funny mod - and if it was, forgive me. I think that you have hit the nail on the head. It does appear that there is a chance that we will see the "dumb terminal" PC at home for the masses ( arguably a good thing ) I would prefer that there was plenty of competition on the way to the eventual ubiquity of this . So lets hope that the challenges that Microsoft face ( its own s/ware etc ) will allow at least a competitor of some size to , shall we say , keep the game honest

Predictions

He also rates the success and failure rates of his predictions quite mercilessly, something no other columnist or "pundit" ever does about their own hits and misses.

I disagree, it's now becoming common in prediction articles (particularly the year in review ones) on scoring last years predictions.
I prefer them, even when they're mostly wrong because of the insight into how we were thinking last year against what actually happened.

Re:It's a trap.

I think you also have to take into account that google needs to expand in different market.Being number#1 online search engine and advertiser is great ,but as soon as better search engine comes out thye might lose all this pretty fast. Unlike m$ ,for example , whose revenue stream is guranteed and even if they start lose some market share (highly unlikely) it will be happening a lot slower than it takes to change your default search engine.

Re:I'm not sure how to take this..

Not so many jobs - just money. The article says they only estimate about 75 jobs for the San Antonio datacenter. But that datacenter will be CPS Energy's #1 customer and pay a buttload of taxes.

Even with the tax incentives the City/County are giving Microsoft, they still have to pay taxes to the school district, etc. during the incentive period - WITHOUT putting significant additional strain on the school district with addition attendees caused by an increase in jobs in the area.

Re:Bang for the Buck? Microsoft is in big trouble.

Google is not ignorant.

Re:It's a trap.

Yeah, they'll blow through $10 billion [google.com] in no time.