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November 19, 2005
The new Google Internet?
Would you believe Google has plans for 300 super data centres - 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage crammed into a shipping container - connected to the company's dark fibre, and placed at 300 Internet peering points around the world?
As Robert X. Cringely puts it, the results would be profound:
Take Internet TV as an example. Replicating that Victoria's Secret lingerie show that took down Broadcast.com years ago would be a non-event for Google. The video feed would be multicast over the private fiber network to 300+ data centers, where it would be injected at gigabit speeds into each peering ISP. Viewers watching later would be reading from a locally cached copy ... For the first time, Internet TV will scale to the same level as broadcast and cable TV, yet still offer something different for every viewer if they want it.
And ...
As for the coming AJAX Office and other productivity apps, they'll sit locally, too. Two or three hops away from every user, they'll also be completely backed-up by two to three data centers down the line. Your data never goes away unless you erase it. Your latency and system response are as low as they can possibly be made for a network app.
And remember the Google Web Accelerator that came and disappeared? It's back! Only this time the Web Accelerator will have the proper hardware and network infrastructure to make it worth using.
Honestly, these days we don't know whether to believe Cringely or not. But it's a compelling scenario.
Posted by cw at November 19, 2005 12:23 PM
Comments
A nice replacment for the Google Search Appliances...
Posted by: Stephen at November 21, 2005 07:52 AM
Here is a couple of articles, the first is from Josh at We Hate Tech. In this article, he speaks of what Google could do with the rumours of the 'Dark Fibre'. And then over at Slate, Jack Shafer speaks of the 'Google Wipeout' with a key player being Rupert Murdoch and his 'RupeWeb' and 'RupeGrap' services.
Posted by: Stephen at November 23, 2005 08:38 AM