Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook have the largest data center footprints with IT gear than anyone else in the industry. Their programs are relatively young. Google started 15 years ago. Microsoft got going big 10 years ago. Amazon launched AWS 8 years ago. And Facebook followed after.

Throughout the history of technology developments a company collapses in the face of competition. Each of these companies have different business models, but the data center programs are critical for the operation of these companies. It is so important that billions of dollars are spent and there are thousands of people dedicated to run things.

It is an interesting thought exercise to ask which one of these data center programs could collapse and why.

Part of what inspired this post is this video on Richard Feynman “The World from another point of view.” Asking questions that give you a different viewpoint can show you things that you hadn’t thought of, and then ask more questions.

Of these four - Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook - how would split up the probability of a collapse of their data center programs and what would the recovery look like?

Could a design decision be made that causes a cascading failure? Unthinkable. And because it is unthinkable it might happen as no one thought how to mitigate the event.