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. aliasxneo · 1791155259 · focus · HN ↗

         This was more than a decade ago. Back then, the data center didn't even have public signage because Google was trying to be so secretive. Things have changed significantly since then and a lot of data is now published publicly.

         1. kube-system · 1791169177 · focus · HN ↗

            Very few datacenters run by companies of any size, large or small, have signage.

            Companies put signs on buildings so you can find them. Signs are important for retailers or offices where people need to find it. This isn't really the case for a data center. Data centers typically have a sign with simply the address of the building on it, so delivery drivers can find it. Any sort of a sign with branding is a waste of money at best, and a security liability at worst.

            Even if you aren't worried about intentional security threats to your data center, you don't want the name of your company on it, because people will start showing up at the gate there instead of your primary business location.

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