Google joins Facebook’s Open Compute Project, will donate rack design

A Google data center in Douglas County, Georgia. (credit: Google)

Google today said it has joined the Open Compute Project (OCP), and the company will donate a specification for a rack that it designed for its own data centers.

Facebook founded the Open Compute Project in 2011 to share designs of servers and other data center equipment. Many companies, including Microsoft, have joined the project and contributed their hardware designs. While Google has been building its own hardware for years, it hasn't joined the project until now.

Google's first contribution will be "a new rack specification that includes 48V power distribution and a new form factor to allow OCP racks to fit into our data centers," the company said. Google will also be participating in this week's Open Compute Summit.

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