Google has offered a sneak peek at one of its top secret (but rather beautiful) data centres, showing the technology that powers billions of web searches, YouTube clicks and Gmail conversations every day.
Until now, the search engine giant has only allowed a handful of employees access to its eight buildings around the world.
But these images, taken by photographer Connie Zhou, offer ann insight into the technology that powers The data centres – or ‘server farms’ – which house the equipment are so vast, employees have bicycles to get around.
Created as part of the Where the Internet Lives project, the images reveal a multi-coloured maze of cables and equipment, bathed in ambient light.
In a blog post, Urs Hölzle, the company’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said: “Very few people have stepped inside Google’s data centres, and for good reason. Our first priority is the privacy and security of your data, and we go to great lengths to protect it, keeping our sites under close guard.
“Fourteen years ago, back when Google was a student research project, Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] powered their new search engine using a few cheap, off-the-shelf servers stacked in creative ways. We’ve grown a bit since then.”
Google has also expanded its business over the years to include email (Gmail), web browsers (Chrome), social networking (Google+) and mobile software (Android), among other services.
It has also added the corridors of its complex in Lenoir, North Carolina, to its Street View pages.
Watch a video showing how the data centres work below:
View a gallery showing photos from the data centre here
