What is Google's Data Center plan for Nov 26, 2010 - day of HTC's Chrome OS tablet

I"ve been hearing from a variety sources that Google is getting for its biggest ever advertising campaign.  My speculation is Google is preparing its entertainment device launch where the device will have games, music, and video to compete against the fruit company, Apple.  Google TV was a way for Google launch its entertainment efforts, and it is easy to slide the content over to a Chrome OS tablet.

News is circulating today about the new Google device.

Chrome OS tablet from HTC reported to ship in November

The tablet, with Verizon Wireless as the carrier, would be available by Black Friday

By Matt Hamblen

August 18, 2010 04:25 PM ET

Computerworld - An HTC tablet running Google's Chrome operating system will be sold by Verizon Wireless in late November, according to an unnamed source cited by the blog Downloadsquad.

The blog's source specifically said that the tablet will appear on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. The blog said the tablet would probably be heavily subsidized by Verizon to compete against the Apple iPad.

HTC and Verizon could not be reached for comment.

The blog also speculated that the HTC tablet would have plenty of popular features, in keeping with HTC's Nexus One smartphone tradition. Those include a 1280-by-720 multitouch display for the tablet, 2GB of RAM, and a minimum of 32GB of storage, the blog said.

Google has been building up its HD content with advertising windows on Youtube.  And Google Leanback which is streaming videos in a TV type of experience. 

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There is Google Music.

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Google Games.

GDC Europe: Google Details Chrome Web Store Specifics
by Kris Graft

August 18, 2010

GDC Europe: Google Details Chrome Web Store Specifics

Google is looking to make some major changes in the way people pay for, play and receive games.
At GDC Europe in Germany this week, Google game developer advocate Mark DeLoura showed off the progress the search engine giant has made in the gaming space. The company plans on launching an app store for its increasingly popular Chrome web browser in October, and games will be a major focus of the company going forward.
Web-based gaming has a bright future, said DeLoura, who showed declining U.S. video game boxed retail sales numbers versus a burgeoning online social game market.
"If you're at [FarmVille developer] Zynga, you're probably incredibly happy, but for social and casual overall, it's looking much better [than console gaming]," he said, as reported in a 1UP video.

Now do you have a better idea what is building up in Google's data center for Nov 26, 2010?

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Google adds 20 year 114 MW Renewable Energy Purchase to its Green Data Center strategy, is electricity hedging a future for data centers?

Google's Urs Hoelzle posts on Google's Official Blog their Google Energy LLC renewable energy purchase.

Reducing our carbon footprint with the direct purchase of renewable energy

7/20/2010 07:12:00 AM

When we decided in 2007 to voluntarily become carbon neutral, our intent was to take responsibility for our carbon emissions and promote sustainable environmental solutions. We approach this goal in three ways. First, we minimize our energy consumption; in fact, we’ve built some of the world’s most energy efficient data centers. Second, we seek to power our facilities with renewable energy, like we did in Mountain View, CA with one of the largest corporate solar installations. Finally, we purchase carbon offsets for the emissions we cannot directly eliminate.


We just completed a substantial 20-year green Power Purchase Agreement that allows us to take responsibility for our footprint and foster true growth in the renewable energy sector. On July 30 we will begin purchasing the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation at the NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa at a predetermined rate for 20 years. Incorporating such a large amount of wind power into our portfolio is tricky (read more about how the deal is structured), but this power is enough to supply several data centers.

The wind farm, which began operation in December 2009, consists of 100 GE 1.5MW XLE turbines.

Google is not buying this power for its data centers.  Google is reselling the power on the spot market.

In this case, we’re buying renewable energy directly from its source – the wind farm. We cannot use this energy directly, so we’re reselling it back to the grid in the regional spot market – but retiring the RECs associated with the power. By obtaining RECs through the purchase of green power, our deal has a greater impact on the renewable industry than simply buying “naked” RECs from third parties; our long-term commitment directly frees up capital for the developer to build more wind projects.

With Google's cash reserves and long term view they have figured a better way to use their money than buying Renewable Energy Credits (REC).

Buying renewable energy directly from the developer impacts the development of renewable energy projects in ways that are more meaningful than the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from third parties. RECs allow energy consumers to identify and track power made from eligible sources of renewable energy. They have value and are typically bought and sold independently of the electricity from which they are generated.

Most data center operators have discounted renewable energy as they look at the local availability.  With Google Energy LLC, Google is changing the game in the same way that Southwest Airlines added fuel hedging to its strategy being an airline.

Hedging fuel

Southwest has a longtime program to hedge fuel prices. It has purchased fuel options years in advance to smooth out fluctuations in fuel costs.[citation needed]

In 2000, Southwest said it had "adjusted its hedging strategy" to "utilize financial derivative instruments... when it appears the Company can take advantage of market conditions." Additionally, the company hoped to "take advantage of historically low jet fuel prices."[25] Southwest’s decision proved to be a prescient and, for a time, an extremely profitable effort.[citation needed]

To lock in the low historical prices Southwest believed were occurring at that time, Southwest used a mixture of swaps and call options to secure fuel in future years while paying prices they believed were low. The company also stated that with this new strategy, it faced substantial risks if the oil prices continued to go down. They did not. Previously, Southwest had been more interested in reducing volatility of oil prices. Now, they hoped to reap large gains from oil price appreciation.[citation needed]

In 2001, Southwest again substantially increased its hedging in response to projections of increased crude oil prices. The use of these hedges helped Southwest maintain its profitability during the oil shocks related to the Iraq War and later Hurricane Katrina.[citation needed]

Google can make a move few can do.  The idea of long term renewable energy purchase allows Google to be a player in defining the future energy market.

Would you bet against Google in this area?

We depend upon large quantities of electricity to power Google services and want to make large actions to support renewable energy. As we continue operating with the most energy efficient data centers and working to be carbon neutral, we’re happy to also be directly purchasing energy from renewable resources.
Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Operations

Urs Hoelzle is making his mark in the data center industry that hopefully many others will follow.

How many of you think of the value of RECs you own and can resell?  Urs knows the future value of Google Energy's REC portfolio.  It will be interesting to see Google's next move.

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Analyst predicts how music Droid will eat Apple's lunch

Barron's reports on an interview with Charter Equity Research Managing Director Ed Snyder.  Who is Ed Synder?

Snyder is a former telecom engineer, who has been covering the telecom industry since Alexander Graham Bell called for Watson. And I have found him mostly right about things telephony, with wires or without. One of his basic tenets throughout the evolution of wireless phones has been that music is the killer application. The key to Apple's (ticker: AAPL) strategy of linking the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad with one operating system, the iOS family, has been iTunes' central role in managing music, applications and software updates. The easy, seamless ability to transfer music from the iPod via iTunes to the first iPhones was a huge factor in the Apple smartphone's acceptance and continued success. That, in turn, is driving iPad sales.

Ed brings up Music as the killer app for Google.

Now, Snyder suggests that music is the application that could provide Google's (GOOG) open-source Android OS the chance to leap over Apple. The analyst predicts that the next-generation music platform, which is likely to be cloud-based, will be the major battlefield in the smartphone war over the next year or so.

And mentions data centers as a key to Google's strategy.

Snyder says that Google must offer a content-delivery system similar in function to iTunes, but based in a cloud—meaning music is stored in one of Google's famous data-center clusters somewhere and delivered via the Internet and over airwaves to various devices. (ITune libraries sit on the local hard drive of personal computers). He thinks that Google should strike deals with (or, I suppose, buy) one of the many cloud-based streaming-music services already used on wireless devices.

Smartphones, Music, and Data Centers are Google's opportunity to eat Apples' lunch.

How a Droid Could Eat Apple's Lunch

By MARK VEVERKA | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR(S)

Apple's iPhone reigns supreme, but a veteran telecom analyst argues that the momentum belongs to Google's Android system.

APPLE 'S IPHONE IS THE undisputed king of the smartphones, but there is swelling sentiment that Google's Android platform may steal the crown in the end.

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Google's action to limit speed trap avoidance used in France declaring Google a monopoly

NYTimes posts on France's declaration of Google a monopoly.

Google Ruled a Monopoly in France

July 2, 2010, 3:53 AM

From Floyd Norris in his latest High and Low Finance column:

It is fun to run a monopoly. But in the long run, it can be a lot less enjoyable to own one.

Why?

Companies change as they grow larger and more profitable. Bureaucracy and success slow innovation. Will this new product hurt an old one? If so, should we delay, or price it very high? Old monopolists find themselves outrun by newer companies with no stake in the old ways.

What did Google do?

In a preliminary ruling, the Authorité de la Concurrence said that Google's Adwords system, which prompts ads to appear alongside search results, lacked transparency and "resulted in discriminatory treatment."

The ruling followed a complaint by Navx, a French company that provides data on the location of road traffic speed cameras and petrol prices, as well as other services and content for GPS devices. Navx said its ads were removed without warning from AdWords in 2009, and accused Google of anti-competitive practices.

Google said the reason for the disappearance of the Navx ads was a change of policy in 2008, when it decided no longer to promote services helping people to avoid speed cameras and fines.

The issue being debated is whether Google has the rights to limit a French companies business model.

"The competition authority is saying that Google has a dominant position," said Ron Soffer, Navx's lawyer. "When you have that position you can't just do what you want."

Google is confident it is in the right.

A final decision is expected in September, and a Google spokesman said the company remained "confident of a positive outcome."

But this is politics and gov'ts around the the world are looking for ways to regulate Google.

IBM was one of the first high tech companies to have monopoly problems.

However, IBM's dominant market share in the mid-1960s led to antitrust inquiries by the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on January 17, 1969. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business. The case dragged out for 13 years, turning into a resource-sapping war of attrition. In 1982, the Justice Department finally concluded that the case was “without merit” and dropped it, But having to operate under the pall of antitrust litigation significantly impacted IBM's business decisions and operations during all of the 1970s and a good portion of the 1980s.

Microsoft monopoly history is well known.

Google is next.

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Google's Data Center Secret, Leadership is top in industry

There are lots of opinions out there from Data Center Leadership with Google making an occasional appearance.  Google is the biggest data center operator out there and as one Google employee has said "many dismiss what we do as unique to Google, but we actually work on many issues that are general industry issues."  And, as another friend who knows someone in the Google data center group has said the best manager he has had is Urs Hölzle.  Which fits in with this post I have been thinking about for a while.

Is Google's Data Center advantage due to its leadership?  Not the size of its data center footprint?

For those of you who don't know Urs here is his profile on Wikipedia.

Urs Hoelzle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Urs Hölzle is senior vice president of operations and Google Fellow at Google. As one of Google's first ten employees and its first VP of Engineering, he has shaped much of Google's development processes and infrastructure.

Before joining Google, he was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara. He received a master's degree in computer science from ETH Zurich in 1988 and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that same year. In 1994, he earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where his research focused on programming languages and their efficient implementation. Via a startup founded by Urs and Lars Bak, that work then evolved into a high-performance Java VM named HotSpot, acquired by Sun' JavaSoft unit in 1997 and from there became Sun's premier JVM implementation.[1]

WSJ had a recent post on the issue that CIOs don't make good leaders.

Why CIOs Are Last Among Equals

Their perceived shortcomings are often real. But they can be overcome.

By PETER S. DELISI, DENNIS MOBERG and RONALD DANIELSON

Are CIOs doomed to forever be second-class citizens among top executives?

We don't think so, but they've got a lot of work to do to avoid that fate.

Chief information officers are more important than ever to the success of their companies, given the crucial role information technology has come to play in every aspect of business. But in most companies, the CIO still isn't viewed as a peer by other senior executives, who tend to see CIOs as specialists lacking the full set of broad management skills. Very few CIOs have become CEOs, especially outside the high-tech industry.

CIO

Wesley Bedrosian

What's holding CIOs back? The problem is that, for the most part, their fellow executives' perceptions are correct. Based on our research, it's clear that most CIOs don't have the broad business understanding, strategic vision and interpersonal skills that it takes to run a company or at least play a bigger role in running one.

Well Urs doesn't have this problem as he is on Google Operating Committee, was Google's first VP of Eng, and has access and influence to Google Executives.


Urs Hölzle
Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow

Urs Hölzle served as the company's first vice president of engineering and led the development of Google's technical infrastructure. His current responsibilities include the design and operation of the servers, networks and datacenters that power Google. He is also renowned for both his red socks and his free-range Leonberger, Yoshka (Google's top dog).

A year ago Google's Data Center team held their Energy Efficiency summit, and there was a peak into the staff who works for Urs like Chris Malone, Ben Jai, Jimmy Clidaras, Luiz Barroso, and Joe Kava.

I was impressed that Urs stayed the whole time at the Summit, and I was able to have side conversations that built upon my interview I had with him back in Oct 2008.  His knowledge and understanding of the business and technical issues are impressive.

So, is Urs the keystone that keeps the whole Google Data Center group running?  And without him the arch (organization collapses).

A keystone is the architectural piece at the crown of a vault or arch which marks its apex, locking the other pieces into position.[1] This makes a keystone very important structurally.[

I would argue as good as Urs is he has built up a solid organization and embedded the importance of the data center infrastructure (buildings, HW, and software) at the executive level.  I am constantly amazed at how much money is spent on data center redundancy, and people are treated as expendable.  If you spend money on getting the best equipment, why don't companies spend money on getting the best people for the data center?

One fact that beats all the rest of the data center leadership is Urs is the richest being one of the first ten Google employees, but it also means he wants Google to survive long term.  What is a sustainable data center organization when Urs leaves?

I can think of other executives who have the talent to present their ideas at the executive level, like Mike Manos and Olivier Sanche. 

Can you think of other Data Center executives who can present compelling presentations to the executive staff, and his organization looks to for data center leadership?

James Hamilton pointed out folks at Netflix and RIM.

After the talk I got into a more detailed discussion with many folks from Netflix and Canada’s Research in Motion, the maker of theBlackberry. The discussion ended up in a long lunch over a big table with folks from both teams. The common theme of the discussion was predictably, given the companies and folks involved, innovation in high scale service and how to deal with incredible growth rates. Both RIM and Netflix are very successful and, until you have experienced and attempted to manage internet growth rates, you really just don’t know. I'm impressed with what they are doing. Growth brings super interesting problems and I learned from both and really enjoyed spending time with them.

Are the companies who have the most sustainable data centers the one who have the best leadership?  BTW, these executives get the value of a green data center strategy.

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