Google On The High Seas

from the yo-ho-ho-an'-a-barrel-o'-patents dept

It looks like Google has had enough of the taxes, rules, and regulations associated with hosting its data in various countries around the world. Its solution? Floating data centers anchored beyond national boundaries. The idea seems pretty ridiculous on its face. The costs associated with maintaining a fleet of barges, in addition to the challenges that would arise regarding server maintenance, power requirements (wave power? really?), and security (protection from real pirates), make the effectiveness of such a solution highly questionable. To make this story even more ridiculous, Google has filed for a patent on the idea, presumably so that it can reap the huge rewards when everyone else realizes that hosting data at sea is the way to go. To be fair, this is likely just a defensive patent filing -- given Google's past patent activities. But what does it say about the patent system when a company has to waste the resources of the patent office, on an idea that's probably never intended to be implemented, with the possible effect of preventing someone else from innovating in a related area? And, even though the idea as proposed may be silly, what if someone else could make something similar work? Do we want a single company to have the exclusive right to attempt something like this? The patent system is supposed to promote progress, not be an anchor dragging it down.

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Your Company Will Be In Trouble If You Don't Focus On Product Quality

from the better-products-needed dept

One of the biggest signs that a business has trouble ahead is when it seems to be focusing on everything except the quality of its products. Back in the dot-com boom it was common to see a bunch of MBAs get together and draw up plans for a technology company, raise a bunch of funding, throw a lavish launch party, buy a Super Bowl ad, and then hire some programmers to implement the product almost as an afterthought. Most of them aren't around any more. If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I think I would be worried about the rumors going around that "an aggressive acceleration of the company's investment in its data center network" will be "one of the cornerstones" of Microsoft's online strategy. Obviously, Microsoft is going to need more and better data centers to compete effectively with Google. But ultimately, success in the online marketplace is the result of having great products, not great data centers. If you've got such a great product that demand is outstripping your server capacity, it's not that hard to buy additional infrastructure. But if your core products suck, a lot of servers and disk space isn't going to do you any good. Indeed, I suspect that it doesn't even make sense to build "data centers" in the abstract. It's hard to know exactly what mix of hardware will be needed and how it should be set up without a specific suite of applications in mind. So it seems like it would make sense for Microsoft to focus its resources on developing and marketing great products (like this one, perhaps) and upgrade their data centers as demand warrants. Treating data centers as a "cornerstone" of their strategy seems like they're putting the cart before the horse.

Techcrunch points us to an even more egregious example of focusing on the wrong things: AOL has been touting the number of new sites it plans to launch in the coming year. It's hard to think of a more meaningless statistic than the number of websites your company owns. AOL says it plans to roll out 30 websites by the end of 2008, but one good website will generate more traffic than 30 bad ones. Google, for example launches new sites all the time, but you don't see them bragging about the number of new sites they're launching. They understand that what their customers care about is what their sites can do, not how many there are. Of course, this is probably an outgrowth of AOL's misguided idea that it's in the advertising business rather than the online content business. When your company focus is on advertisers, then websites probably seem like interchangeable places to sell ads. The problem is that if the content isn't any good, you'll have fewer and fewer eyeballs to sell to those advertisers—even if the number of websites you own keeps going up.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Area Energy Prices Influence Data Center Locations

from the the-cost-of-juice dept

There's been a lot of interest lately in ways for data centers to reduce their energy consumption and environmental footprint and by extension save money. Energy considerations are particularly important for companies like Microsoft and Google, which are both building massive data centers all around the country. A breakdown of state-by-state energy costs gives some insight into how these companies are selecting their locations. North Carolina, where Google is breaking ground on a new location, has seen a year-over-year decrease in the price of commercial energy, putting it in the top third of all states (Google also was given tax incentives by the state to locate there). Oklahoma has seen a rather precipitous drop in energy costs as well, so it's not surprising that Google is also building a site there. Energy prices also influenced Microsoft's decision to build in Washington state, which comes in at #10 on the list. Historically, states have tried to attract technology investments by offering tax incentives and promoting the education level of their citizens. In the future, they may also wish to tout the level of competition in their energy markets.

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Blame Murphy's Law, Excessive Hubris For Blackouts In SF

from the or-blame-the-PR-people,-your-choice dept

Lots of San Francisco-based web sites (Craigslist, Six Apart, Yelp, and Technorati, among others) have been experiencing some problems today, after power outages in the city took down 365 Main, a major hosting facility there. While the power company says it doesn't yet know what's caused the outages, we have a pretty good idea: a 365 Main press release that went out this morning, bragging about the two years of continuous uptime one of its customers has had since moving to the data center. And when these guys invoke Murphy's Law, they don't do it by half, either. The release also brags about the center's "unique billing system in which 365 Main only charges customers for the exact amount of power that is used" -- so presumably today will be free. But what really sealed their fate was this paragraph:

"To ensure uptime for key tenants such as RedEnvelope, 365 Main provides modern power and cooling infrastructure. The company's San Francisco facility includes two complete back-up systems for electrical power to protect against a power loss. In the unlikely event of a cut to a primary power feed, the state-of-the-art electrical system instantly switches to live back-up generators, avoiding costly downtime for tenants and keeping the data center continuously running."

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