Google just moved from its temporary New York space in Times Square to a new 311,000 sq ft home in the Port Authority building across from Chelsea Market. A gaming room and free cafes keep Googlers in the office to work on products like Froogle and Dodgeball.
The Voice provides some techie details and analysis...
The old Port Authority headquarters sits atop one of the main fiber optic arteries in New York City—the Hudson Street–Ninth Avenue "fiber highway." The venerable behemoth is already one of the country's most important "carrier hotels"—loosely speaking, the physical connection points of the world's telecommunications networks and the World Wide Web. As a result, Google will "have access to as much bandwidth as possible and as much variety of bandwidth as possible," says Dana Spiegel, a technology consultant and executive director of NYC Wireless....Google is up to something.
In 2005, the company spent some $838 million on facilities and hardware. Along with massive purchases of unused "dark fiber"—the underground fiber optic cable left dormant since the dotcom crash—the company has invested in a series of giant data and networking centers. These data centers are home to an estimated 450,000 individual servers, grouped in clusters, or "server farms." With its vast open floors and technological amenities, 111 Eighth Avenue appears to be an ideal location for a massive Google data center.
"It turns out that one of the biggest global peering facilities is in New York City at 111 Eighth Avenue," St. Arnaud says, referring to the physical spots where tech firms hook up with one another. By positioning server farms in key locations like 111 Eighth Avenue, industry experts believe, Google is quietly, but systematically, building the most advanced computer network in history.
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