Google catches wave power

[rpm]

Google catches wave power

Internet giant Google has patented a design for a floating data centre that will use wave power as a source of electricity and sea water as a cooling system.

 

[Freshy-ZN]

As long as they dont put the pontoons in the Gulf of Mexico it should work..

 

[Gatecrasher]

Now "surfing the web" can be taken literally.

 

[sunsoffun]

As long as they dont put the pontoons in the Gulf of Mexico it should work..

...or anywhere close to africa!

 

[Lord-Nikon]

Another bright idee from Google!

Keeping it "Green"

 

[w1z4rd]

Now "surfing the web" can be taken literally.

 

[rjtrickett]

Is it really that green?

The site also points out that the floating data centres could require far less red tape to establish as they would be located out of any land-based authority’s jurisdiction.

I'm not so sure about them keeping it green on this one. They've only patented their design and they can't exclusively claim the ocean as their own power source, similar concepts can be used up by competitors if the idea is successful.

What happens if this becomes a standard practice and then we have the worlds data centres all stored in the ocean? On a small scale it's negligible, but Google is not a small company and neither are their competitors. Mass adoption of this concept could heat the ocean and disrupt currents, this would devastate the marine ecology and be more of a direct global warming hazard than greenhouse gasses.

 

[spykoss]

Google jsut wanna take over the world... but hey, which billion-dollar company isn't?!

 

[ConsiderThis]

I'm not so sure about them keeping it green on this one. They've only patented their design and they can't exclusively claim the ocean as their own power source, similar concepts can be used up by competitors if the idea is successful.

What happens if this becomes a standard practice and then we have the worlds data centres all stored in the ocean? On a small scale it's negligible, but Google is not a small company and neither are their competitors. Mass adoption of this concept could heat the ocean and disrupt currents, this would devastate the marine ecology and be more of a direct global warming hazard than greenhouse gasses.

Hmm... you've got my vote for the doom prophet of the day.

 

[kronoSX]

waves of change i tell you..waves of change