Robert Cringely never stops amazing me with his insights! Yesterday, he wrote about what Google is researching on and what could be its impact! He says:
There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn’t just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We’re talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.
Read the full story: Google-Mart – Sam Walton Taught Google More About How to Dominate the Internet Than Microsoft Ever Did
I am visualizing what these shipping container puppies will look like! Imagine yellow colored containers with a big G on them! Probably with a billboard 😉 What if they planted a little smaller boxes around popular places in your city and gave WiFi access? May be they will have smaller boxes that you and I can buy and be a part of the Grid!
Just reminds me of how I ran my imagination wild writing for Microsoft’s “Imagine the Magic” competition in 1996. I am going to write some more on it and Google on Monday!