Google’s Not So Secret Weapon

For years, the Big Interet Companies - Yahoo, Microsoft, and now Google - envisioned a world where users don’t store data locally but on huge servers. Users would only have devices to connect to the data.

The limitation in superiority in this battle is the number of servers… this report says Microsoft has 200,000 where Google has over 450,000.

Here’s something about how Google is moving ahead in that direction. 

From the International Herald Tribune

And odd as it may seem, the barren land surrounding the Columbia along the Oregon-Washington border - at the intersection of cheap electricity and readily accessible data networking - is the backdrop for a multibillion-dollar face-off among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that will determine dominance in the online world in the years ahead.

Microsoft and Yahoo have announced that they are building big data centers upstream in Wenatchee and Quincy, Wash., 130 miles to the north. But it is a race in which they are playing catch-up. Google remains far ahead in the global data-center race, and the scale of its complex here is evidence of its extraordinary ambition.

“No one says the ‘G’ word,” said Diane Sherwood, executive director of the Port of Klickitat, Wash., directly across the river from The Dalles, who is not bound by such agreements. “It’s a little bit like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Harry Potter.”