MaximumMike

October 10, 2011 at 8:31am

This article is junk.

Keith E. Whisman

October 09, 2011 at 7:48pm

For all you Global Warming fanatics, since the Earth heating up doesn't that mean that Iceland will simply melt away in the next few years making any such endeavors a waste of time and resources?

Won't the heat from these data centers help to melt Iceland away? Ha ha ha.. Global Warming freaks. Al Gore took the idea of global warming and did his best to turn it into reality so he could make a movie to convince millions of idiots that Global Warming isn't a theory but a reality and that buying credits from his company and paying him millions to give speaches on the subject is a good idea. It's a Jedi Mind trick you weak minded fools. 

Here, I'll tell the world that the sky is falling and make a movie about it and several speaking engagements. I'll also make it extremely hostile and career ending for any scientist to disagree with me like Al Gore did. Now give me millions to give speaches and pay me for sky credits for your offsets or what ever as the Sky will fall. Everyone panic, but we can reverse this, we can stop the sky from falling by giving me money. 

I'm extremely embarrassed for Google. I thought they were above this unless they are doing this to simply save on energy and manpower costs.

aarcane

October 09, 2011 at 1:49pm

If only we could use heatpipes to be able to deploy these datacenters in the US, and pipe the heat in and out to iceland.

vrmlbasic

October 09, 2011 at 1:26pm

Instead of a risky and expensive move to Iceland (where harsh conditions abound & the vast majority of data transmission to customers depends upon vulnerable seabed cabling) why not have the existing vast data centers devote some funds to buying up parcels of land for preservation?

It stops overdevelopment, enhances the natural appeal of the countries where the data centers are located, preserves ecosystems, and has the potential to go "negative carbon" instead of a mere "carbon neutral".

And/or we could have America build some more nuclear plants, and with their low emissions all an American data center would have to do to achieve carbon neutrality/negativity is plant some trees on its roof and call it a day.

Iceland is expensive in time, money, and risk.  Buying trees is cheap.

"Either way it’s great to see companies looking for new ways to make cloud computing sustainable" Carbon neutrality doesn't make cloud computing sustainable.  Reliable fast connections, low prices, and functional security without hindering data access would do that.  According to this very article, this Icelandic company isn't achieving that, not with those pings over frail cabling.  Their marketing gimmick doesn't outweigh their lack of practicality.  And I ask: Will this Icelandic service be sufficiently inexpensive such that moving data hosting there would make sense?

 

SleepyCatChris

October 09, 2011 at 9:52am

"World's first"? http://www.thordc.com/