In what would spell the end of microfiche and be an unparalleled research resource, Google is launching an initiative to archive newspapers in their original form from all over the world, every one of them, in their entirety.

In addition to showing these newspapers in their original form, Google will of course make them fully searchable, so users will get both the text and the original image from the paper.

The platform Google is using is not unlike the one used for Google Books, except with advertising being a lot more prominently featured than with Google Books. Interestingly, Google does not have a “beta” tag attached to this launch, whereas Gmail is still in beta after what seems like years.

This isn’t Google’s only news today: word is they’ve filed a patent for their design on a floating data center that will be powered by Pelamis Wave Energy Converters and cooled by sea water.

There are many obvious advantages to building these on the water: first of all, in addition to the money saved by generating wave energy the cooling mechanism provided by ocean water would save tons of money on energy compared to land-based server farms. Second, there would likely be far less red tape and tax hits leveled on Google by government authorities.

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