Googled by the GooglePlex

The curiously named Bing Futch @ "What the Futch" has a post about Google that will make you pause.


He points you at I, Cringley, with an article dated January 19th When Being a Verb is Not Enough: Google wants to be YOUR Internet.

" .....I spoke recently with an old friend who is a bandwidth broker. He buys and sells bandwidth on fiber-optic networks around the world. And he told me something that I found not completely surprising, but I certainly hadn't known: Google controls more network fiber than any other organization. This is not to say that Google OWNS all that fiber, just that they control it through agreements with network operators. I find two very interesting aspects to this story: 1) that Google has acquired -- or even needs to acquire -- so much bandwidth, and; 2) that they don't own it, since probably the cheapest way to pick up that volume of fiber would be to simply buy out any number of backbone providers like Level 3 Communications."

...............

"There are two aspects to this control issue, but let's take the legal one first. If Google bought a bunch of Internet backbone providers, such a move would of course get the attention of regulators from the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the two federal agencies charged with looking at large corporate mergers for signs of anti-competitive activity. But simply acquiring legal control of those same assets through leases and other long-term contracts doesn't trigger such an examination, though perhaps it should. By renting instead of buying, Google was able to acquire its fiber assets primarily in secret. The game was over before most of us even knew there WAS a game."

..........................

"I live in South Carolina, a state that I can argue qualifies as a technology backwater despite being the shrimp and grits capital of the world. Why, then, are the local business pages filled with stories about Google preparing to build massive data centers here? Google is apparently negotiating to build data centers in Goose Creek, a town not far from Charleston, where I live, in Columbia, the state capital, and a third location across the border in Georgia. To read the papers, Google might choose one or another of these locations, but according to people I have spoken with who are fairly close to the action, Google actually seems intent on building in all three locations.

Why?

Why would Google need two data centers in a state with only four million residents? Why would they need to buy 520 acres in a Goose Creek industrial park when that's probably 100 times as much land as any conceivable data center would require?

Google is building a LOT of data centers. The company appears to be as attracted to cheap and reliable electric power as it is to population proximity. In Goose Creek they bought those 520 acres from the local state-owned electric utility, which probably answers the land question posed above. By buying out all the remaining building sites in an industrial park owned by an electric utility, Google guarantees itself a vast and uninterruptible supply of power, much as it has done in Oregon by building a data center next to a hydroelectric dam or back here again in Columbia by building near a nuclear power station. "

read on.....

Billy Girlado has some interesting comments on the same topic and on the way Google Blog Search has blown away Technorati with an interesting graph from Hitwise.

Elsewhere you can find that Charleston Digital Corridor relates the shadowy deals going down to secure the 520 acre site in Goose Creek.

Aluminum giant Alcoa, which had sold the Mount Holly Commerce Park property to Maguro Enterprises, declined to comment on the sale Wednesday.

Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility that generates power for the area, said that it is 'legally obligated' to not discuss what is planned for the site.

Berkeley County Electric Cooperative, which would transmit electricity to the property, also declined to comment.

A newly formed entity named Maguro Enterprises paid nearly $17 million for about 520 acres in Mount Holly Commerce Park off U.S. Highway 52, between Goose Creek and Moncks Corner, Berkeley County property records show. Some of the documents in that deal were notarized in Santa Clara County, Calif., an area that includes the Silicon Valley headquarters of many high-tech companies, including Google Inc.

The name Maguro seems to have now been switched to Pyrite LLC. Pyrite plans to make a US$750 Mn. investment and employ at least 400 workers earning an average of $90,000 a year, said Berkeley County Supervisor Jim Rozier.