Why Google invests Billions in building Data Centers?

Where would Google go next? and Why?

Google's CEO comes from a company where he worked on the vision - The Network is the Computer. Now he has the money to prove it. So what does this mean? Let me start by talking about Google's investments in the past few years.

Google has been investing in large data centers around the world. It has been investing $1B a year by conservative estimates on building these data centers. As far as it is publicly known it is not buying hardware from any of the major vendors -i.e. SUN, HP, IBM, DELL. There are reports that Google is making its own motherboards and servers through contract manufacturers in China/Taiwan. With that type of a cost structure, $1B would buy a lot of computing power that can only be compared to what NASA and Pentagon has. Why would anyone spend all this money in building massive data centers that is geographically diverse? Its not all certainly for making its search better or to get more advertisement dollars. It does those just fine with what it already has.

Now let us look at what Google has in "Beta" --> http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/. What is the underlying theme of all that is available? Put together What are they capable of doing? Case in point - Information access on demand - Search and gain access to Video (Google Video, YouTube), Library of information, Research papers, patents, maps, shop (froogle), mail, productivity software (spreadsheet, document editor, calendar), Comment on (blogger), Chat with (talk), Organize (Groups), Interpret (Translate). And have access to all of this from anywhere in the world as wireless technology becomes more accessible, which it is. What more could anyone want on a day-to-day basis to keep themselves busy/entertained/be productive? Do all this faster? That's why there is Google Web Accelerator! But there is something missing. What is the connection between these seemingly diverse applications, build-up of computing capacity, Google's vision of "do no evil" and Schmidt's "The Network is the computer"?

Well if you can do everything that a computer does from anywhere in the world through a wireless network connection and a very simple and affordable Google "device" - would that mesh well with everything in the previous paragraph? It is easy to phantom that the productivity of the entire human race would increase over a period of time? I think so. Not just that, Google can leverage all of this and sell us more through targeted advertising which they are already very good at!

So, to truly realize this "The Network is the Computer" vision along with "Do no Evil" (by providing affordable access to productivity tools to the masses) and expand on what they are already good at (search, advertising) you need computing power. If a billion people need to run spreadsheet, document editor, video streaming etc, you need to be near them to serve the request made to that application over a wireless network. For this you need to invest many billions in geographically diverse and redundant data centers.

Get ready to truly elevate the productivity of human race. What Microsoft did to a niche, Google, I think, wants to do to the human race.