A while back there was a flurry of activity around a startup proposing floating datacenters - at the time I thought it was kind of a dumb idea ... followed by another post with a more on-the-point headline:

"Floating Data Centers Miss the Point, Add a Bunch of Risk, and Will Keep You Up At Night; On the Other Hand, Deploying Your Applications on a Cloud of Commodity Computers With Appistry's Application Fabric Will Deliver the Goods" (note: slight edit)

Since then the idea has been rather quiet, though today Engadget is reporting that Google has filed a patent app covering their take on the same notion.

At first glance this appears to be a more far reaching version of the floating data center notion, adding an interesting (though still fairly conceptual) energy generation notion.

The idea of self-generating power ups the potential benefits idea (beyond cooling and portability) a potential big step ... yet the two biggest hurdles remain.

Hurdles That Remain
Leaving expense aside, how to connect sufficient bandwidth to a floating data center is remains an enormous challenge - whether wireless or wired, it's just going to be difficult.

Second, this really will need to be at least as sturdy as The Unsinkable Molly Brown if it's going to have any value beyond conceptual bantering.

Whether from terrorists, storms, or just inexplicable mistakes, the prospects of all those computers ending up wet wet wet is a sobering one, indeed.

Just ask Mazda ... and their problem was only dented cars.

A Big Idea
Bottom line, I think this is a "big idea" that will pop back up from time to time, and will probably even have some very flashy demos and prototypes.

But ... and this is a very big but ... I think it's days as a practical alternative for hosting stuff that we really care about are still a long way off ... if ever.

Update 1: This story also showed up on Slashdot, with a decent discussion following.