Google gives virtual tour of data centers via Street View
updated 12:00 pm EDT, Wed October 17, 2012
Tour shows how Google manages servers, data
Google has put a tour of one of its data centers online. The search engine's tour, entitled Where the Internet lives, shows how it manages the server farms hosting data for its numerous services, in an effort to demonstrate the company's efficiency in running such a location, as well as the lengths it goes towards securing its users data.
The tour contains photographs from Connie Zhou, with shots consisting of rows of server cabinets, workers performing maintenance, a collection of hard drives with holes punched through them, and other similar imagery. Despite the fact that the data centers are not usually examined by the general public, it's surprising to see a large amount of Google branding, with red, blue, yellow, and green colored sections throughout the building's ecosystem.
Accompanying the photo tour is a Street View gallery of some of its locations. Although not as visually attractive as the images taken by the photographer, the Street View does give an idea of the scale of such a facility, as well as containing a number of Easter Eggs for keen-eyed viewers.
