Where the Internet Lives – Details, episodes & analysis

Dwane Roth is a fourth-generation farmer growing corn, wheat, sorghum, and sunflower in southwestern Kansas. Back in 2016, the state of Kansas launched a three-year pilot designed to test the latest water conservation technologies on three working farms. Dwane’s farm was one of them. 

Seeing the benefits, Dwane became an outspoken advocate for high-tech approaches to water conservation – approaches that could help restore the critical Ogallala Aquifer running underneath most of western Kansas. 

In this episode, we ask how data-driven predictive tools are helping farmers use less water and improve yields. Plus, we look at how data and AI are getting excess food to those who need it most. And we confront the paradox of hunger and food waste existing at the same time, in the same places. 

Guests: 

• Emily Ma, head of special projects in REWS sustainability at Google
• Prem Ramaswami, head of Data Commons at Google
• Stephanie Zidek, vice president of data and analytics, Feeding America
• Dwane Roth, farmer and water conservation advocate in Kansas
• Astro Teller, captain of moonshots at X, the moonshot factory

Watch our complementary documentary about how data and AI are getting excess food to those who need it most, and the paradox of hunger and food waste existing at the same time, in the same places.

In January 2024, winter storm Gerri swept across the Midwest, bringing subzero temperatures with it. In Omaha, Nebraska, just as everyone was turning up the heat, the city’s four thermal power plants went offline. 

Tim McAreavey is the VP of Customer Service at Omaha Public Power District. As the freeze gripped Nebraska, Tim and his team began an all-out effort to enlist the help of their biggest customers to reduce energy demand – including a Google data center.

In this episode, we have three stories about how data centers are helping decarbonize the energy system – and how to manage the growing energy needs of AI. Plus we learn about Tapestry's mission to make everything on the grid visible by using data science and AI to plan, predict, and monitor assets across the network.

And we ask how data centers and the tools they enable are helping communities accelerate clean energy while making the electric grid more resilient, literally keeping the lights on for homeowners, businesses, schools, and hospitals.

Guests:

• Page Crahan, Tapestry team lead at X, the moonshot factory
• Savannah Goodman, data and software climate solutions lead at Google
• Urs Hölze, Google fellow and former senior VP for engineering at Google
• Alexina Jackson, vice president of strategic development, AES
• Tim McAreavey, vice president of customer service, Omaha Public Power District
• Astro Teller, captain of moonshots at X, the moonshot factory

Watch our complementary documentary about how AI-assisted tools like Alphabet’s Tapestry are helping accelerate clean energy while making the electric grid more resilient—literally keeping the lights on for homeowners, businesses, schools, and hospitals.

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 Solar, a company using AI to quickly model and execute millions of rooftop solar projects. Aurora partners with Google’s Project Sunroof to integrate vast geospatial data sets into the software.

As the digital tools behind solar get more sophisticated, data centers have the potential to be the backbone of the clean energy economy.

Learn how Project Sunroof is enabling more solar. To discover how data centers are  supporting clean energy around the globe, check out Google's 24/7 carbon-free energy mission.

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 construction, and hundreds of permanent jobs in operations. Since then, the region has attracted more data centers from other top tech, retail, and entertainment companies. 

Intimately experienced with the ups and downs of Lenoir's economic transformation, Rachel is part of Lenoir's new generation of workers who are employed at a data center rather than in the furniture industry.

Learn more

 about career opportunities and Google’s investments in communities like Lenoir.

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 dedicating his life to making that a reality.

After you listen to the episode, watch the documentary about grasslands restoration at Google’s data center.

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 progress – all enabled by data centers. 

Subscribe to Where the Internet Lives on Google podcasts, Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get your shows.

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. 

Today, Andreas leads a team that makes sure data center maintenance gets done on time and up to quality standards. But he never loses sight of his inner kid – and a passion for cracking open a computer himself to see what needs fixing. 

Learn more about building your career at a data center.

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 biomedical engineering background to focus on personal health at Fitbit – and data centers are more important than ever to his work. 

Learn more about building your career at a data center.

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, Bikash first used a computer in high school. It didn’t take him long to get hooked on the concept of networking. 

Today, as VP and head of global networking, he directs a team of architects who design and build a network that can withstand traffic surges, natural disasters, and a global pandemic. He and his team work at the forefront of networking technologies that keep the internet humming.

Learn more about building your career at a data center.

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 tangible outcomes. And that led her to oversee construction of Google's data centers in Northern Virginia. As a program manager, she literally helps build new data centers from the ground up. 

Learn more about building your career at a data center.