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Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

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Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#51

Post by erikpukinskis »

octosphere wrote: post #9

Anyone find anything that Google does these days to be aggressively competitive? As a one-man startup guy, I feel everything I do pales in comparison to what Google are doing and I feel nothing more than /eclipsed/ by them. I have found myself wondering: "If you can't beat them join them" on many occasions. I probably should just merge into Google one day and stop my worrying?

Every company has things they structurally cannot do well. Google scales? They can’t do customer service. Facebook has all the network effects? They can’t iterate rapidly. Tesla has the best electric cars? They can’t sell nostalgia.

That’s why people tell you to “be yourself”. It’s a rough proxy for “don’t be other people” which is a rough proxy for “don’t be something someone else is already succeeding at.”

But also, if you are really enamored of Google, maybe that means you should work towards getting hired there!

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#56

Post by skrebbel »

octosphere wrote: post #9

Anyone find anything that Google does these days to be aggressively competitive? As a one-man startup guy, I feel everything I do pales in comparison to what Google are doing and I feel nothing more than /eclipsed/ by them. I have found myself wondering: "If you can't beat them join them" on many occasions. I probably should just merge into Google one day and stop my worrying?

I'm a startup founder, and I've never understood this worry.

I know of scary few products by Google (or one of the other tech bigcos) that successfully wiped out an up-and-coming startup.

They did acquire quite a bunch, but can you name a successful Google product that killed a startup without acquiring it? I'm sure there are some but it can't be much. Docs, Android, Firebase, Maps all came out of acquisitions.

I mean, sure, they're super competitive, but my impression is that that competitiveness is mostly targeted at Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. I mean GCP is mostly just Google reimplementing the most popular AWS products with less cruft. That's super competitive but I'm curious how it threatens your one man business.

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#57

Post by modeless »

badrequest wrote: post #41

At Google Next in April, I attended a talk by the C-level in charge of Google's Datacenters, and they bragged about using machine learning to manage/anticipate their power draw, and the subsequent efficiencies those brought. They also bragged about how much they're trying to make these centers powered by renewables. When an audience member asked if they would be releasing their models that help them manage power, the…

The trained models are likely not directly applicable to any other company's data centers. Instead, Google publishes machine learning research. Open access so that everyone can benefit. Here's a paper on Deepmind's reinforcement learning system for datacenter cooling: https://deepmind.com/research/publications/safe-exploration-...

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#58

Post by andrerm »

chvid wrote: post #46

Will these data centers still be subject to mass data collection by the us government (under arrangements similar to the prism program described in the Snowden relevations)? Does it matter at all that these centers are placed outside the us?

Google is a US corporation. It doesn't matters

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#59

Post by mav3rick »

badrequest wrote: post #41

At Google Next in April, I attended a talk by the C-level in charge of Google's Datacenters, and they bragged about using machine learning to manage/anticipate their power draw, and the subsequent efficiencies those brought. They also bragged about how much they're trying to make these centers powered by renewables. When an audience member asked if they would be releasing their models that help them manage power, the…

They could have saved Earth and you would find a fault. This is a great initiative, but you're criticizing about not "open sourcing" it. Google open sources plenty of things. The solution maybe heavily coupled to their infrastructure.

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#60

Post by bt848 »

badrequest wrote: post #41

At Google Next in April, I attended a talk by the C-level in charge of Google's Datacenters, and they bragged about using machine learning to manage/anticipate their power draw, and the subsequent efficiencies those brought. They also bragged about how much they're trying to make these centers powered by renewables. When an audience member asked if they would be releasing their models that help them manage power, the…

Google’s datacenter power management relies on software features that nobody outside Google is prepared to accept. Most operators expect to have thermal headroom for short CPU clock rate bursts and they don’t want some central daemon downclocking their machines. From what I’ve seen outside Google, most organizations would get much more benefit from focusing on utilization than trying to replicate Google fan speed control techniques. If you still have UPSs and dual AC-DC power supplies in every box and your PUE is 2.0 you don’t need the thing that allowed Google to go from 1.11 to 1.10.
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