The Importance of Google and Taking the Internet off the Grid

What makes Google so important to our future isn't what you think.

We think of its search, or its advertising. That's its primary business, and its business model. But what makes Google important is its innovation, and how the industry follows that innovation.

Google pioneered the idea of opening the windows on its data centers, replacing air conditioning with natural cooling. Google pioneered the idea of shipping containers with its primary functionality to remote locations, saving on the movement of files and making itself more robust. Google has pioneered the use of renewable energy, especially solar energy, to power those data centers.

All these innovations are now being tested, and expanded upon, in a New York state project run by HP, GE, AMD, and others, using a small state grant and students from Clarkson University.

The idea is to try and build a solar-powered data center.  That is, you put the data center into a shipping container, you minimize its use of energy, you try to collect that energy through solar and wind systems, and you put it all together in a mini-grid that powers the whole system.

The Internet, and the computers attached to it, are among the biggest power sinks on the planet. We already know how to run remote clients like iPhones off-the-grid – simple solar chargers that get smaller and closer to fitting onto the back of the unit every day. The same is true for other clients. The move from wall-powered desktops to battery-powered laptops saves immense amounts of energy, and the flat top of a laptop is the perfect home for a solar power system.

Now we're talking about not just taking servers, but clouds, off-the-grid, reducing their power use to zero. This is a tremendous sea change in our energy outlook. Even if we don't succeed everywhere – even if we just double the use of that power and make it into a heating system for a building – we are dramatically reducing energy demand while enabling an actual increase in computing output, on a more robust, stable Internet grid.

That's the kind of innovation that makes Google important.