Where the Internet Lives

The Netherlands has a unique relationship with water. One-third of the country lies below sea level, and almost 20% of the mainland is water – largely due to the 6,000 kilometers of waterways that support industry and recreation.

Pumping and diverting and blocking water is what made the Netherlands possible, turning it into a vital European trading hub and top agricultural exporter. But now, the masters of controlling water are facing a new challenge: worsening drought.

That’s why Google partnered with North Water, a Dutch water treatment company, to harness water from a network of canals to cool its data center. 

The €‎45-million project featured construction of a pipeline that can carry 10 million cubic meters of water each year to the data center. It also required a new treatment plant to treat and filter the water. The project illustrates the creative, sustainable methods for cooling data centers that Google is deploying around the world.

Learn more about Google’s partnership with North Water and Google’s water sustainability commitments. After you listen to the episode, watch a short documentary film about the project here. 

Ian Yang knew he was gay at an early age. But it wasn’t until arriving at Google that he felt comfortable opening up about his sexuality – eventually lighting a spark that made him a positive force in the political discussion around LGBTQ+ rights in Taiwan.

Ian is an operations engineer at Google’s data center in Changhua County, Taiwan. He ensures that management and training processes run effectively inside the facility. He is also one of the coordinators of the largest Gay Pride parade in East Asia.

Over the last decade, Ian has witnessed – and influenced – dramatic change in the politics around same-sex rights in Taiwan. 

Learn more about Google’s data center operations in Taiwan. Read about Google’s support of the LGBTQ+ community.

Note: this episode contains references to sexual assault. Please take care while listening.

Data centers are the latest in a long list of big projects that Dave Moody has tackled over three decades running a construction company. But as an aspiring Black architect, he didn’t know if he’d ever have the same opportunities as his white counterparts.

Racial disparities didn’t stop him. Dave started with a single $88,000 contract in the late 1980s and grew his company, CD Moody Construction, to build museums, stadiums, and airport terminals.

As his business expanded, Dave had to face a personal trauma head-on – reckoning with the memories of childhood sexual abuse – and learn to live his life as a healed person, not just a survivor. That allowed him to seize on new opportunities, like when Google came looking for help with data center construction in Georgia. It also allowed him to become a model and mentor for others.

Learn more about Google’s supplier diversity program. After you listen to the episode, watch a short documentary film about Dave and his journey  here.

A solar-centric world is coming. Solar generates just over 3% of the world's electricity. By the middle of the century, it could make up nearly 40% of global electricity consumption.

That growth is made possible by sophisticated manufacturing, maturing business models, and fast-dropping costs. It’s also increasingly enabled by artificial intelligence – and the data centers that power it.

Samuel Adeyemo is the co-founder of Aurora Solar, a company using AI to quickly model and execute millions of rooftop solar projects. Aurora partners with Google’s Project Sunroof to integrate vast geospatial data sets into the software.

As the digital tools behind solar get more sophisticated, data centers have the potential to be the backbone of the clean energy economy.

Learn how Project Sunroof is enabling more solar. To discover how data centers are  supporting clean energy around the globe, check out Google's 24/7 carbon-free energy mission.

Lenoir, North Carolina, was once a global furniture manufacturing hub. For Rachel Scercy, the furniture industry was the center of her family life. And then the jobs vanished in the 1990s.

Today, communities like Lenoir are often seen as great sites for data centers because of their strong industrial histories. In 2007, Google built a $1.2 billion data center a mile outside of Lenoir, creating over a thousand jobs to date – hundreds in construction, and hundreds of permanent jobs in operations. Since then, the region has attracted more data centers from other top tech, retail, and entertainment companies. 

Intimately experienced with the ups and downs of Lenoir's economic transformation, Rachel is part of Lenoir's new generation of workers who are employed at a data center rather than in the furniture industry.

Learn more

 about career opportunities and Google’s investments in communities like Lenoir.

In Tennessee, the digital future is merging with the ecological past. 

Clarksville, where Google has a data center, is home to a fragile ecosystem that has vanished across America: grasslands. What if we could use large campuses like data centers to transform land back into long-lost prairies – restoring ecological diversity and an important piece of American history? Dwayne Estes of the Southeastern Grasslands Institute is dedicating his life to making that a reality.

After you listen to the episode, watch the documentary about grasslands restoration at Google’s data center.

Where the Internet Lives is back for a third season. 

Over the last two seasons, we’ve introduced you to the technologies and people that run data centers, unveiling a world few people get to see.

This season, host Stephanie Wong explores how data centers change the world around them in surprising and transformative ways.

We’ll hear stories about economic transformations, technological leaps, human rights, equity, and environmental progress – all enabled by data centers. 

Subscribe to Where the Internet Lives on Google podcasts, Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get your shows.

Each individual server stacked high inside a data center is powerful in its own right. But without a way of linking them together, they aren't much use to anyone. 

It takes a vast collection of switches, cables, and software control systems to create a well-functioning global network. It is Bikash Koley’s job to connect Google’s fleet of data centers – and make that connection seamless and invisible to users.

Growing up in India, Bikash first used a computer in high school. It didn’t take him long to get hooked on the concept of networking. 

Today, as VP and head of global networking, he directs a team of architects who design and build a network that can withstand traffic surges, natural disasters, and a global pandemic. He and his team work at the forefront of networking technologies that keep the internet humming.

Learn more about building your career at a data center.

Over the years, Majd Bakar has overseen several critical consumer tech advancements inside Google: Chromecast, GoogleTV, Google Nest Wifi, and the cloud gaming platform Stadia. All of them are directly linked to the growth of data centers.

From the moment Majd played with his first computer as a kid growing up in Syria, he has pursued a mission of making tech intuitive and accessible.

Today, Majd uses his design expertise and biomedical engineering background to focus on personal health at Fitbit – and data centers are more important than ever to his work. 

Learn more about building your career at a data center.

Few people are ever allowed on a data center floor. Andreas van der Linden is one of those people. 

Andreas is a data center technician and the maintenance lead at Google's Eemshaven data center in the Netherlands. Every day, he and his team weave through aisles of server racks, making sure all the computers are running optimally.

To become an expert at fixing computers, Andreas first had to become an expert at taking them apart. 

Today, Andreas leads a team that makes sure data center maintenance gets done on time and up to quality standards. But he never loses sight of his inner kid – and a passion for cracking open a computer himself to see what needs fixing. 

Learn more about building your career at a data center.