BIG TUBES
Google's focusing on a serious infrastructure hub in New York, according to this piece from the Village Voice. As the article explains:
"111 Eighth Avenue, designed by Lusby Simpson and completed in 1932 to house the Port Authority of New York, is one of the largest buildings in the city, an architectural marvel, and a landmark.
Looming like a 15-story locomotive over Chelsea, the mammoth red-brick structure occupies an entire city block between Eighth and Ninth avenues and 15th and 16th streets—a footprint larger than two football fields.
And a footprint big enough for Google's giant steps."
What's special about the building? Well, it's all got to do with location, location, location, as you'd expect:
"...what lies beneath 111 Eighth Avenue may be more important than the building itself. The old Port Authority headquarters sits atop one of the main fiber optic arteries in New York City—the Hudson Street–Ninth Avenue "fiber highway."
The venerable behemoth is already one of the country's most important "carrier hotels"—loosely speaking, the physical connection points of the world's telecommunications networks and the World Wide Web.
As a result, Google will "have access to as much bandwidth as possible and as much variety of bandwidth as possible," says Dana Spiegel, a technology consultant and executive director of NYC Wireless."
Regular readers have seen my earlier posts on Google's mega-infrastructure plans (see here, here, here and here). This potential move is one more step in making those ambitions a reality.
The Village Voice article provides a lot of interesting detail. Recommended.
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