Google is tight-lipped about its computing operations, but the company for the first time on Wednesday revealed the hardware at the core of its Internet might at a conference here about the increasingly prominent issue of data center efficiency.

Most companies buy servers from the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, or Sun Microsystems. But Google, which has hundreds of thousands of servers and considers running them part of its core expertise, designs and builds its own. Ben Jai, who designed many of Google’s servers, unveiled a modern Google server before the hungry eyes of a technically sophisticated audience.
Google server designer Ben Jai

Google’s big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there’s a problem with the main source of electricity. The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers–each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts.

Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Bob Iger warned the cable TV industry not to alienate consumers by restricting cable programing on the Web to paying TV subscribers because it could provoke a consumer backlash.

“The consumer is king, not us the content provider and not you the distributor,” he said on Thursday at an industry event, The Cable Show.

Cable executives are working on plans to extend popular cable programing to the Web to paying subscribers as a way to retain cable TV customers who might prefer to watch programs online at their convenience.

Cable operator Comcast Corp calls its plan Online On Demand; Time Warner Inc calls its plan TV Everywhere.

But Iger sounded skeptical about the early plans and urged caution in execution.

IBM Corp. withdrew its offer to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. for about $7 billion this weekend, clouding the prospects for a deal that would shake up the computing industry, The Associated Press has learned.

Talks were in their final stages in recent days, but IBM took its offer off the table after Sun terminated IBM’s status as its exclusive negotiating partner, according to two people familiar with the situation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the negotiations.