Author defines the Internet’s ‘Tubes’ but Google keeps its secrets

Until very recently, the company even kept their data center’s location off its own Google Maps record. “The satellite image of this data center in The Dalles wasn’t old – it was obscured. It was rubbed out on Google Maps.”

It’s changed online dating and grocery shopping. It’s
started revolutions and caused big bubbles in the economy.
But when you get down to brass tax, there is always a path
from one person to another because the Internet is merely
a series of tubes.

Author Andrew Blum explored the data centers that hold the
information that we so readily access from the misnomer
“cloud” for his latest book “Tubes.”

Blum went to the places where the Internet physically
exists. There was a lot of machinery and a lot of blinking
lights and yellow cables. There are also a lot of guys in
hoodies, down on the floor trying to fix broken routers.

Among the data centers visited by Blum were two belonging
to the most popular websites in the world: Facebook and
Google, which are both located in Oregon. These are places
that can’t hide in plain sight. They have to announce
where they’re located.

Facebook embraced Prineville, Ore, and the town embraced
the social network’s network right back.

While Facebook, among many other data centers welcomed
Blum in to explore and to see what it really looks behind
Oz’s curtain, one data center only offered a tour of their
parking lot.

“All of these companies have a commercial interest in
talking about what they do and how they’re the best at
it.”

So for many of these companies he talked to there was
usually a competitor. When companies got wind that Blum
would also be checking out the competition, the doors flew
open.

“Genuinely, they’re eager to tell their story. They are an
overlooked piece of the economy. ”

By the time Blum was set to visit Google’s data center, in
The Dalles, Ore. he’d already been to dozens of buildings
where he was welcomed in by engineers who genuinely wanted
him to understand what was going on, how the actual
‘tubes’ of the Internet worked.

“At Google, I was offered a tour of the parking lot, then
this delicious lunch, with organic salmon and peanut
butter cups, and all this great stuff, and that was it.”

He asked his tour guide, ‘Can you tell me what happens
here?’ The tour guide replied, ‘I think that’s information
we have internally, but that’s not something we typically
share.’

Google organizes and distributes the information of the
world, unless it’s about Google, Blum said.

Until very recently, the company even kept their data
center’s location off its own Google Maps record. “The
satellite image of this data center in The Dalles wasn’t
old – it was obscured. It was rubbed out on Google Maps.”

They’ve now switched it; there is an image of the
buildings when you look down on Google Earth. “But for a
while, it was smudged.”

From the outside, Blum said the Google data center looks
like a penitentiary.

“Maybe it is,” said host David Boze. “Maybe that’s why
you’re not allowed inside. All the greatest minds just
forced to stay there, forced to eat whatever is grown in
the garden and salmon sandwiches.”

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