What is Google Building Out in San Francisco Bay?

By MARTHA MENDOZA

San Francisco’s mayor says he doesn’t know what it is. Police say it’s not their jurisdiction. And government inspectors are sworn to secrecy.

Google (GOOG) is erecting a four-story structure in the heart of the San Francisco Bay but is managing to conceal its purpose by constructing it on docked barges instead of on land, where city building permits and public plans are mandatory. Construction became obvious a few weeks ago.

The Internet giant’s actions at Treasure Island appear legal. But the mystery surrounding the bulky floating building — and a similar one off Portland, Maine — is generating rumors and worries.

Privacy experts, environmentalists and legal authorities say that whether it is a store to sell Google’s Internet-connected glasses, a data storage center or something else, the secrecy may backfire because Silicon Valley residents are highly protective of one of the most scenic and environmentally sensitive bays in the U.S.

“At some point they’re going to have to unveil what it is they’re doing, and it will be sad if they have put a lot of money into something that is simply not allowable in the bay,” said Deb Self, executive director of the environmental group Baykeeper.

Self said whether the barge-mounted structure is a store, as is widely rumored, or a data center powered by wave action, for which Google has a patent, there are going to be grave concerns.

“We don’t really want to see the bay used as a shopping mall. Unacceptable,” she said. And environmentalists warn that water-cooled data centers might warm the sea and harm marine life.

Google’s usually responsive media relations team hasn’t responded to repeated calls or emails over several days, but records and other official accounts identify the project as Google’s.

Google has dodged public scrutiny by essentially constructing a vessel, not a building. Thus it doesn’t need permits from San Francisco, a city with copious inspection and paperwork requirements for builders.

Google has also avoided the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a state agency that governs projects on the water and has its own long list of public reviews and permit requirements.

If, when the project’s ready, Google wants to sail it out the Golden Gate and into the Pacific Ocean, the tech giant won’t ever need to explain what it’s been up to.

But if Google wants to do anything with the structure in the bay, it will have to face public scrutiny, said BCDC executive director Larry Goldzband. He said the agency has had a few meetings with Google, but “they’ve been less than specific about their plans.”

“When they decide to let us know what they plan to do with it, or hope to do with it, then we can decide if it’s allowable,” he said.

Work on the barge is kept under wraps, literally. Supplies are kept onshore in hangars rented by a Delaware corporation named By and Large, (a play on the word “barge”?), under a $79,000-per-month lease that expires next August.

The name and number for By and Large on the lease led to a man named Mike Darby, who seemed baffled by a call from The Associated Press. “I’m not sure how my name got on the lease,” he said. “I have nothing to do with it. I’m in Singapore and it’s the middle of the night.”

A second man on the lease, Kenneth Yi, couldn’t be located.

There is one agency keeping an eye on things: The Coast Guard has been routinely inspecting the two barges on the East and West coasts, as it would any vessel under construction, but spokeswoman Lt. Anna Dixon said she couldn’t talk about what the agency has found, citing nondisclosure agreements with an entity other than Google.

Such agreements, she said, are “not a standard practice” at her agency. She said she didn’t know the name of the entity.

A similar four-story structure was built this summer in the New London, Conn., harbor, and has now moved north off Maine. The Day newspaper in Connecticut found details tying that barge to Google in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Santa Clara University law professor Dorothy Glancy said nondisclosure agreements involving inspectors are common for land-bound Silicon Valley construction projects because there are plenty of trade secrets in the clean rooms and laboratories where computer chips are built and technology is developed.

But she said Google might want to take a lesson from another bay-area mystery barge. In the 1970s, billionaire Howard Hughes docked an enormous barge called the Glomar Explorer just off Mountain View, Calif., where Google is now headquartered. Hughes said the Glomar was going to mine manganese from the ocean floor, but in reality it was being used for a top-secret CIA mission to search for nuclear missile codes in sunken Soviet submarines.

“That experience should have told Google that being mysterious like this tends not to build public confidence,” Glancy said.

Privacy advocate Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, said it is ironic that the company that wants to open the world’s information to everyone “so zealously guards its own corporate secrecy.”

“The barge is a perfect metaphor for a company that likes to ask forgiveness for its transgressions rather than permission,” he said. “It’s also a symbol of how far from mainland values the company is going with Glass and its privacy problems.”

• 
  Your smartphone already allows you to do instant price comparisons at the store, usually by scanning a barcode. There are several  apps that let you “showroom” in this way.

  We don’t know which, if any, will be available for Glass. But assuming one of these apps gets ported over to the new hardware, you’ll be able to get price comparisons just by picking up a product and looking at the barcode.

  And it doesn’t end there. A couple of those apps — including Google’s own shopping app — are able to recognize the covers of books, DVDs, CDs and games, which means you don’t even need to find and focus on the barcode. So, for example, if you find a book on the shelf and want to see if it’s cheaper online, you could just look at it, whisper a command, and immediately have a bunch of price comparisons floating in your field of vision. And you’d also be able to call up reviews, too, so you won’t have to rely on those selectively quoted blurbs that publishers choose.

  1. Barcode Scanning and Price Comparisons

• Want to buy those jeans, but aren’t sure if you’re close to the limit of your monthly clothes budget? Several personal finance tools allow you to keep track of your budget, and this strikes us as a perfect use for Glass. Imagine if you could just say, “Okay, Glass, bring up Mint and show me how much I’ve spent on clothes this month.”

  And sometimes it’s not just a matter of budgets — you also want to make sure you don’t overdraw your account or spend so much that you don’t have enough left over for food. If your online banking app becomes compatible with Glass, perhaps you could see your checking account balance floating before your eyes with equal ease.

  2. Budget and Account Balance Checks

• People tend to behave better when they know they’re on video, and if you’re wearing Glass, the person behind the customer service desk has to assume they’re being filmed.

  Hopefully, that doesn’t lead to people harassing put-upon customer service reps by demanding preferential treatment, lest they post videos of their bad experiences on YouTube. But insofar as it keeps companies honest and helps ensure they follow their own stated policies, perhaps the knowledge that employees are on Google’s candid camera can be a good thing.

  But the contribution Glass could make to customer service goes beyond just filming disputes: Customer service technology firm Genesys recently floated a couple of scenarios in a blog post. A customer trying to assemble a cable box, for instance, could beam his or her field of vision to technical support staff, who would then be able to see the problem and direct the customer on what to do next. They also suggest that a hotel guest out and about with Glass could send live video to a concierge, who could then identify what part of town  he was in, and recommend restaurants and attractions on the block.

  3. Get Better Customer Service

• 
  Google+ hasn’t exactly taken off like the company might have hoped, but the social network did give us one great feature: live group video chats, known as Hangouts. While they usually consist of an array of faces, Hangouts on Google Glass are turned inside-out, allowing you to instead share your point of view with the other participants.

  In demos of the feature, Google used it to dramatic effect, showing a hangout with a group of skydivers as they jumped out of a plane. But we’re envisioning a more mundane application: Trying on clothes.

  If your friends couldn’t join you on a shopping expedition, you can put on that dress, initiate a Hangout, look in the mirror and then get live feedback from a panel of friends. We see this being a particularly potent tool for personal shoppers who can’t always be physically present with their clients.

  4. Get Live Feedback on That Outfit

• One application of Glass is having your grocery list right there on a heads-up display, which means you don’t have to look down at a list on your smartphone or on a piece of paper. But no one’s going to spend more than a thousand bucks on Google Glass just to replace a sticky note on their shopping cart.

  Fortunately, the most recent demos of the product have touted the inclusion of Evernote. The popular note-taking app allows you to put together to-do lists that include voice memos and photographs, and they can also be shared across multiple users. We imagine you could go to the grocery store with your wife and split up to divide and conquer; as each of you picks up items, you can tell Glass to check it off the list, and the other person will see that it’s in the cart.

  There are other ways it could help you coordinate your grocery shopping expedition. Let’s say your wife sent you to the store to pick up pancake mix, but you don’t know which kind she wants you to get. Instead of calling her and reading off every brand and variety in front of you, you can just initiate a video call and look at the pancake section; she’ll see what you see, and be able to tell you which one to get.

  5. Divide and Conquer at the Grocery Store

• The grocery store applications don’t end there.

  Perhaps you get to the grocery store and see they’re having a big sale on chicken thighs. Being the frugal sort, you decide to pick some up, but you’re not sure what to do with them.

  Tell Glass to run a Google search for recipes featuring chicken thighs. Scroll through, pick one, then copy the ingredient list to your shopping list. Now you can get all your ingredients.

  Once you get home, you can have the recipe right in your eye when you need to reference it, with no need to have a laptop or cookbook taking up valuable counter space or getting sauce spilled on it. And if you don’t know the proper technique for deboning those chicken thighs, you can cue up an instructional video on YouTube without ever having to touch a computer with your slimy chicken hands.

  6. Get Recipes on the Fly

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