This month has been super exciting looking into Google’s operation. InformationWeek has covered several articles showing Google’s effort to become more transparent.

By far one of the coolest videos to hit YouTube (which Google owns) was their walkthrough of one ultra efficient Google data center. Never have I seen anything like it. Shipping containers holding servers? Who would have thought? Google, that’s who. Watch the video at the bottom of this post.

Today Google shocked me again with the patent they filed for floating data centers. InformationWeek broke this story too.

Google on Thursday was granted a patent for its floating data center design, an idea that the company filed to protect on Feb. 26, 2007.

The patent describes techniques for designing a data center located on a ship, platform, or on shore that use the tidal motion of the sea to generate electricity and seawater for equipment cooling.

Google is considering floating data centers because of the practical problems it faces in trying to locate data centers on coastal land, where real estate is typically expensive and where inexpensive electricity and high-bandwidth connections may not be available. A floating data center would also presumably enjoy freedom from property taxes.

One word describes this idea, Awesome.