Google's secret centre

gzlaser

IMAGINE this scenario:

You walk into a highly-guarded, huge factory and step into one of several big buildings. You see an endless forest of machine, their lights flashing busily.

Then someone approaches and tells you that these metal boxes process and keep record in real time of the online activities of almost every human being who uses the Internet.

Would you be excited or scared?

These kind of scary scenarios are not only in sci-fi movies.

Last week, a report from The New York Times revealed that Google, the mighty IT corporation, is building a secret giant computing complex somewhere in Oregon State.

Google's Matrix-like \"power plant\" is as big as two football fields with cooling towers four floors high.

According to the report, the new centre will form part of Google's global computing system, called the Googleplex. It will house two huge data centres and thousands of Google servers. They will help power the billions of search queries it handles daily and an expanding range of other services.

The construction is thought to be part of an \"arms race\" as other online companies vie for Google's crown.

Microsoft has announced it will spend more than US$1 billion next year. It aims to quadruple its number of Internet servers to 800,000 in 25 locations by 2011. Microsoft now has about 200,000 servers.

Microsoft and Yahoo are also toying with plans to build multibillion-US-dollar data centres in Washington State.

But Google remains far ahead in the global data-centre race. The rate at which the Google computing system has grown is remarkable. In March 2001, it had 8,000 computers; by 2003 the number had grown to 100,000.

It now has more than 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations worldwide, experts estimate. Google aims to spend US$1.5 billion to increase its capacity, according to a recent report from The Telegraph.

\"Google has constructed the biggest computer in the world, and it's a hidden asset,\" said Danny Hillis, a US super-computing pioneer, referring to the Googleplex.