Where the Internet Lives

Mikko Green is an operations manager at Google's data center in Hamina, Finland. In 2012, when Mikko applied to work at the facility, he was excited about the prospect of moving back to the country where his mother was born.

Over the years, Mikko has witnessed Finland's broader economic shift toward digital tech, which is now a top industry in the country. 

Finland is a top global producer of paper. But every year, paper demand falls...

Sarah Hess is one of a million union workers in the U.S. construction industry. But she’s a rare woman in the field. About 90% of the construction workforce is male – a number that hasn't changed much over the past three decades.

Oregon Tradeswomen is an organization devoted to helping women like Sarah build careers in construction, manufacturing, mechanical, and utility trades. In 2022, Google gave $150,000 to the organization to s...

The Netherlands has a unique relationship with water. One-third of the country lies below sea level, and almost 20% of the mainland is water – largely due to the 6,000 kilometers of waterways that support industry and recreation.

Pumping and diverting and blocking water is what made the Netherlands possible, turning it into a vital European trading hub and top agricultural exporter. But now, the masters of controlling water are faci...

Ian Yang knew he was gay at an early age. But it wasn’t until arriving at Google that he felt comfortable opening up about his sexuality – eventually lighting a spark that made him a positive force in the political discussion around LGBTQ+ rights in Taiwan.

Ian is an operations engineer at Google’s data center in Changhua County, Taiwan. He ensures that management and training processes run effectively inside the facility. He is als...

Note: this episode contains references to sexual assault. Please take care while listening.

Data centers are the latest in a long list of big projects that Dave Moody has tackled over three decades running a construction company. But as an aspiring Black architect, he didn’t know if he’d ever have the same opportunities as his white counterparts.

Racial disparities didn’t stop him. Dave started with a single $88,000 contract in the l...

A solar-centric world is coming. Solar generates just over 3% of the world's electricity. By the middle of the century, it could make up nearly 40% of global electricity consumption.

That growth is made possible by sophisticated manufacturing, maturing business models, and fast-dropping costs. It’s also increasingly enabled by artificial intelligence – and the data centers that power it.

Samuel Adeyemo is the co-founder of Aurora Sol...

Lenoir, North Carolina, was once a global furniture manufacturing hub. For Rachel Scercy, the furniture industry was the center of her family life. And then the jobs vanished in the 1990s.

Today, communities like Lenoir are often seen as great sites for data centers because of their strong industrial histories. In 2007, Google built a $1.2 billion data center a mile outside of Lenoir, creating over a thousand jobs to date – hundreds...

In Tennessee, the digital future is merging with the ecological past. 

Clarksville, where Google has a data center, is home to a fragile ecosystem that has vanished across America: grasslands. What if we could use large campuses like data centers to transform land back into long-lost prairies – restoring ecological diversity and an important piece of American history? Dwayne Estes of the Southeastern Grasslands Institute is dedicati...

Where the Internet Lives is back for a third season. 

Over the last two seasons, we’ve introduced you to the technologies and people that run data centers, unveiling a world few people get to see.

This season, host Stephanie Wong explores how data centers change the world around them in surprising and transformative ways.

We’ll hear stories about economic transformations, technological leaps, human rights, equity, and environmental pr...

Storing photos, taking video calls, or streaming podcasts creates heat. To  keep servers cool, many data centers utilize water running through pipes and along server racks.

Teams across Google have been working intensively for more than a decade to use water as responsibly as possible. And in September 2021, Google unveiled a comprehensive plan to replenish 120% of the water it consumes, and improve the quality of water ecosystems i...

Each individual server stacked high inside a data center is powerful in its own right. But without a way of linking them together, they aren't much use to anyone. 

It takes a vast collection of switches, cables, and software control systems to create a well-functioning global network. It is Bikash Koley’s job to connect Google’s fleet of data centers – and make that connection seamless and invisible to users.

Growing up in India, Bik...

Over the years, Majd Bakar has overseen several critical consumer tech advancements inside Google: Chromecast, GoogleTV, Google Nest Wifi, and the cloud gaming platform Stadia. All of them are directly linked to the growth of data centers.

From the moment Majd played with his first computer as a kid growing up in Syria, he has pursued a mission of making tech intuitive and accessible.

Today, Majd uses his design expertise and biomedi...

Building a data center can be as complex as the machines inside. It requires teams of construction experts who are constantly solving football field-sized puzzles – people like Sarah Godbehere. 

For Sarah, construction is a family affair. Growing up, she watched her father build schools, car washes, and office buildings. 

After getting her engineering degree, Sarah realized that she wanted to work on projects with immediate and tangi...

Few people are ever allowed on a data center floor. Andreas van der Linden is one of those people. 

Andreas is a data center technician and the maintenance lead at Google's Eemshaven data center in the Netherlands. Every day, he and his team weave through aisles of server racks, making sure all the computers are running optimally.

To become an expert at fixing computers, Andreas first had to become an expert at taking them apart. 

Tod...

Mamoudou “D” Diallo's life path has taken him from being a curious youngster in Guinea-Conakry, to an engineering student in Ukraine, to a technology executive in the financial industry, to his role today as a site lead for Google’s data center in New Albany, Ohio. 

In that role, he addresses the staffing needs of a data center, which are as complex and diverse as the technology itself. Each facility needs the right mix of server te...

A hyperscale data center can house hundreds of thousands of servers. All that digital infrastructure requires a vast and intricate set of mechanical systems to keep machines running optimally.

Juliana Conroy-Hoey is a mechanical engineer for Google data centers in Europe. 

She determines how to lay out the pipes and ductwork inside data centers for maximum efficiency and sustainability – the scale of which still gives her a sense of ...

People and information are two of the most valuable things inside data centers. Libby Davis helps protect both.

Libby manages security at Google's data centers in Iowa. She runs a large team that monitors every movement inside the facilities – from the outer walls, to the inner sanctum where the servers sit. 

Libby melded her background in law enforcement, engineering, and organizational psychology to secure one of Google’s largest p...

Modern data centers are like small cities filled with warehouse-scale computers, bundles of cables and pipes, and colossal equipment to keep everything running. 

Kenny “KP” Philpot is an environmental health and safety program manager at Google's Douglas County data center outside Atlanta. 

Before running around the floors of data centers, KP was running around the football field, playing for the Detroit Lions. And before playing pro...

Data centers aren't just warehouses full of computers. They also contain complex arrangements of power equipment, water treatment facilities, and cooling systems that keep computers operating smoothly around the clock. 

Understanding how all these pieces fit together requires seeing the details and the big picture at the same time – something that Damian Diaz has done all his life, ever since he was a teenager fixing handheld radios...