Mr. Marc Hedlund asks: "Is catching up with Google better, or worse, for Microsoft's data centers?" In so doing he relates Mr. Greg Linden's statement about Microsoft's data center building:

This spending [for data centers] is an explicit part of Microsoft's strategy in the search war. In a Fortune article, Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie said that the cost of building these massive online clusters is a huge barrier to entry and that 'the people who could build a viable [Web] services infrastructure of scale are companies that have both the will and the capacity to invest staggering amounts of money.'

A complex system crash project, comrades? The above does give the initiative a sort of 5 year plan hue. In Microsoft's defense, the staggering amount of money may be earmarked to support long, organic development of resilient systems rather than a breakneck one-off for final victory. (p=.40)

see also, Information Architecture as the Company  ¶ 12:14 PM