Google Groans Under Weighty Data Stores

There are two ways to look at the issues Google is apparently having with managing its giant data stores:

1. This is a uniqely Google-ish problem, one that only a company with its hyperbolic data stores could have.
2. It’s a leading indicator where most large organizations are going in a post-Sarbox, fully informated world where every piece of data that is generated is kept.

I am generally of the Option 2 view of things, so I think this is more than a mere artifact of being Google.

Google is consuming storage and computing power at a worrying rate, according to David Girouard, general manager at the firm’s enterprise division.
  
During his keynote at the Interop show here this week, Girouard explained that the firm blows through “an incredible amount” of computing power, disk space, and bandwidth. The exec noted that the firm has “concerns about the future in all these respects.”

 … Google is notorious for playing its technology cards close to the vest and, true to form, Girouard refused to expand on the firm’s back-end data woes when pressed by Byte and Switch.

There have been recent hints that Google, like other firms, could be wrestling with its data demons. According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, the firm’s capital expenditures more than doubled, growing from $259.9 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2004, to $592.4 million for the same period in 2005. Google expects to spend more than $800 million on property and equipment, including IT infrastructure, land, and buildings, to help manage and expand its operations during 2005.

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