Google is the fastest growing tech company in the world. Their blazing fast search engine and other services run on thousands of servers. But like all servers, Google's servers get old and must be replaced. Google obviously just can't give these servers to any old Joe. After all, Google is known for its secrecy and protectiveness. Most importantly, they don't want any data from their servers ending up in the wrong hands. Many of Google's servers must contain personal information about employees, Adwords and Adsense members, and probably code for their various services. What exactly does Google do with these servers?

1. Put Them to Use
Just because a server is old doesn't mean it isn't useful. A server that was too old to be used on their main infrastructure could be used for various other tasks, such as testing projects under development or running various applications needed for the use of employees and internal resources. I think this is a very plausible situation because servers are so expensive and costly to move. Not all applications require powerful servers and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that by the time Google was done with a server, it was still fairly new.

2. Grave Scenario
Considering there is a Google search engine for almost every country in the world and in every time zone, someone is always searching on Google. My guess is their servers never, ever get a break. With the amount of servers Google needs, they must have their servers setup so that each one is always working at full capacity and server power is never wasted. For example, if a server wasn't handling massive United States search traffic during the day, it could be processing data for search engine rankings, updating databases, or maybe even handling searches from people in other countries at night.

With this kind of abuse, I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me Google's servers had a short life span. In most environments, servers almost always get a break. For instance, a server in a corporate environment would be busy all day but after everyone left for the day, quiet all night. Without this kind of break, a server's life span is more than likely decreased greatly.

3. Give Back to the Tech World
Who is to say Google is mean and greedy with its processing power? From this blog written in 2004 we can find out that Google is donating some of its old servers to Wikipedia. This page at Wikimedia, however, suggests the opposite, when it talks about Google hosting Wikimedia and says:

"Google is eager to help us, and Wikimedia are eager to accept their help, but the Board wants to be good stewards of donor money, and this requires them to move carefully."

Clearly, this means there is money involved here, not free servers!

So, who really knows what Google does with their old servers? Maybe it's just one of life's little secrets we'll never know...

written by Robert M.