The interwebs: Powered by wave energy?

A recent patent application made by Google was found that sites, "Computing centers are located on a ship or ships, anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away."

According to a 2005 study completed by Stanford researchers, the year's power bill for all datacenters worldwide was $7.2 BILLION, so the incentives are in place for innovative power and cooling opportunities. The concept suggests that massive floating barges approximately 11 km off shore could house the data centers and be tethered to land with the massive cables needed to transmit the data.

Now, wave power is immature, the methods for cooling are not yet in place, and the risk of a huge floating bomb target that could take down significant data communications are all problems yet to be solved, but the concept is innovative thinking, and I for one am a fan.

 wow that is super innovative!  great idea, and certainly an important problem to solve -- had no idea that data centers eat up that much money every year....crazy.  but, eh, not too sure how safe it makes me feel to think of my data floating out in the middle of the ocean!