A barge built with four levels of shipping
containers is seen at Pier 1 at Treasure Island in San Francisco,
Photograph: Stephen Lam /Reuters
They sit on barges, sprout electronic gizmos, tower several storeys high and are fast becoming Google's worst-kept secret.
The internet giant appears to be constructing floating data centres
off the coasts of California and Maine behind layers of elaborate
security.
Google has said nothing but the hulking structures, built out of shipping containers and shielded by scaffolding, stirred intense sleuthing and speculation on Wednesday.
Contractors working on the structures in the San Francisco bay and
Portland harbour are subject to omerta, and US government officials
familiar with the projects have signed confidentiality agreements.
Technology and security experts said they were probably floating data
centres – for which Google was granted a patent in 2009. The Mountain
View-based company is known for Kremlin-type secrecy during product
development,
On barges the facilities would have access to abundant water, a
requirement to cool large numbers of servers, Joel Egan, the principal
at Cargotecture, which designs custom cargo container buildings, told CNET, whose investigation triggered this week's media scrutiny.
"The cutouts in the long walls of the containers, when they line up,
they make hallways," said Egan. "You could put all sorts of mainframes
into the containers ... It doesn't have enough windows for an office
building."
The San Francisco TV station KPIX suggested the purpose was to be a
floating retail store for Google's "Glass" wearable computer device, but
few bought that theory.
A barge built with four levels of shipping
containers is seen at Pier 1 at Treasure Island in San Francisco,
California October 28, 2013. Photograph: Stephen Lam /Reuters
The barges are 250 feet long, 72 feet wide, 16 feet deep and sport
tall white spires that could be masts, flagpoles or antennas. They were
built in 2011 in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, by C & C Marine and
Repair, and are reportedly owned by By and Large LCC, a company with
apparent ties to Google.
They recently appeared off
Treasure Island, a former military base in San Francisco bay, and
Portland harbour. Chain-link fences and security guards block access.
At least one Coast Guard employee was obliged to sign a
non-disclosure agreement with Google, Barry Bena, a US coast guard
spokesman, told Reuters.
Another person who would only identify himself as an inspector for a
California government agency had to do the same because he was present
during early construction work on Treasure Island's hangar-like Building
3. He also had to surrender his mobile phone.
Bob Jessup, a construction company superintendent who works nearby,
said Google spent the past year working on the project, fencing off a
wide area and employing at least 40 welders a day, who worked around the
clock without saying a word.
"They wouldn't give up any of the information. It was a phenomenal production. None of them would tell us anything."
He said they worked on the inside and the outside of the containers,
outfitting them with electronics – "very hush hush" – and used a crane
to load them onto the barge. They put sides on the containers, with
glass windows in some of them. Precision welding ensured they could
stack.
Larry Goldzband, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay
Conservation and Development Commission, told Reuters his agency has had
several meetings with Google officials about the barge in recent
months. The company provided little information other than saying the
vessel would be used for "general technology purposes," he said.
Google "could not give us a specific plan of any kind," not even
whether they intended the barge to move or stay in one place, Goldzband
said.
Valleywag, Gawker's technology site, mocked what it called the “spooky Nancy Drew adventure” tone of some media coverage.
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