Thread

1. aliasxneo · 1791145670 · focus · HN ↗

   I lived in a smaller rural town near a Google datacenter. During my career there I had routinely come across some outlandish accusations made about our water/power usage from the locals. But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them. I remember we hired a local who'd grown up in the town and he was "really surprised" when he started to see what we were doing to remain efficient.

   The current data center craze just feels like the same thing but on a bigger scale.

   1. adastra22 · 1791151050 · focus · HN ↗

      Those reasons aren’t obvious to me. Why not just be transparent if that’s the case?

      1. monocasa · 1791152134 · focus · HN ↗

         Google considers pretty much everything in hwops to be a trade secret. The point is to keep the specifics unknown as much as possible from competitors; the public at large's knowledge is just collateral damage in that fight.

         1. thayne · 1791153214 · focus · HN ↗

            What benefit could competitors get from that information?

            1. shadowgovt · 1791154623 · focus · HN ↗

               It tells them exactly how much they have to invest in hardware buildout to stay competitive with Google in terms of raw compute.

               This is right up there with being able to predict a competitor's total manufacturing capacity for the next year because you have hard numbers on their raw material purchase.

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