Google has been causing quite a stir on the waterfront.  Two mysterious barges have appeared, one on the Pacific in San Francisco bay and one on the Atlantic coast in Portland, Maine. The San Francisco barge is reported to be 250 feet long, 72 feet wide, and 16 feet deep.  On each barges, four story windowless rectangular structures are being fabricated from shipping containers.  What are they for? Those who know aren’t saying. Even members of the US Coast Guard and inspectors from other government agencies involved in the project have signed non-disclosure agreements.

The speculation about what Google is up to ranges from floating data centers, to a superstore for Google Glasses, to research centers, to a refuge from a zombie apocalypse, or even a giant paint-ball arenas for senior Google execs.

The suggestion that these structures may become floating data centers is lent credence by a 2009 Google patent  for a  “water-based data center,”  Cooling is a significant problem at large data centers and using sea water as a coolant could make sense.

On the other hand, the local CBS television affiliate KPIX 5 says that it has learned that Google is actually building a floating marketing center, a kind of giant Apple store, but for Google Glass, the cutting-edge wearable computer the company has under development.

Personally, the structures remind me slightly of the fictional Borg spaceships from Star Trek.  The interesting thing about the Borg was that they were cybernetic, a blend of machine and living organisms, all continuously connected to the “hive mind.”  With the advent of Google Glass, wearers have been compared to slightly less mechanized members of the Borg collective, always connected to the hive mind that is the Internet.  The Borg mantra — “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated,” sounds almost like a de-facto Google mission statement.

If the Google mystery barges turn out to be showrooms for Google Glass, building them to resemble the Borg spaceships might unintentionally reveal too much.

Thanks to Phil Leon for contributing to this post.