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Should We Know Where To Find Google?
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-04-11
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A publication recently put out a list of Google's datacenters by city; though it's interesting to us, Google probably has good reasons for not appreciating it.
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I still have an old laminated credential for access to a datacenter near Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The pass expired years ago. It's just one of those things you keep around without a logical reason for doing so.
Datacenters impress you by not being outwardly impressive. Their facades are as bland as concrete, by design, to keep passersby from noticing them. A competently run datacenter has multiple barriers to being physically accessed.
Their business, whether privately owned, or leased from another firm, involves the keeping of secrets. In the case of Google, the secrets to their operations are literally worth billions, as far as Wall Street is concerned.
When we heard about a new post at the Royal Pingdom blog about their mapping of Google's datacenters, our first thought was 'why do that'? We're all about openness of information, but we have reservations about this and the informative FAQ Data Center Knowledge published on the topic (Rich Miler there deserves credit for digging up the info, all of which has been discussed publicly.)
For a lot of people, judging by Google's ballooning search traffic numbers in the US, the Internet starts at the search engine. Millions of people each day hit what may be the most important service online.
Google's redundancy of datacenters makes it less vulnerable to a point of failure at one of them. We're concerned that one of them could be thought of as an attractive target to the America haters out there. Like Microsoft, Google represents an American brand that dominates in its niche.
We're not trying to be wildly paranoid here, though as security pros a given value of paranoia has to be part of the job. There are times when the enthusiasm to share knowledge might be better served by a little forethought and restraint.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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