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What company doesn't want more power? Power over suppliers, power over customers, power over the environment -- the desire for power is just human nature. Google, however, needs power in a very literal sense, as in the dozens of megawatts required to maintain its rapidly growing network of server "farms."

In fact, the company's insatiable hunger for power is a potent reminder of what in many ways is the Internet's Achilles heel: the humble wall socket.

The popular vision of Web-based businesses is that they have extremely low costs, since much of what they do takes place on the Internet -- unlike a company such as Wal-Mart, which has to build and run stores and warehouses. But a glimpse into Google's appetite for power shows how significant the costs can be even for a "virtual" company.

Google is building several new server warehouses on the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon. Each one is as large as a football field and has a four-storey-high cooling plant at the end, in order to keep the heat of all those servers from turning Google's search engine into a gigantic slag heap. The company chose the location because of its access to cheap power.

Obviously, not every company has to choose the location for its new offices based on whether there is a large dam nearby. Google is only the most extreme example of an issue that is starting to affect companies of all sizes, as computing requirements increase and power costs start eating into the bottom line. And the arrival of Microsoft's new Vista operating system will mean yet another upgrade to faster machines for many companies, which in turn will require a boost in power.

Pressure from major power users such as Google is starting to have an effect on PC makers, who are coming out with new systems that require less power for the same amount of computing ability. But even with these measures, electricity costs are still a growing concern for PC-centric businesses as power prices rise and IT use increases.

For example, according to one recent estimate, Google has approximately 450,000 servers in about 25 locations around the world (the company doesn't release such information publicly for competitive reasons). Industry experts say a data warehouse complex with 200,000 PCs would require roughly 20 megawatts to both power and cool those racks of PCs, which would cost an estimated $1.5-million (U.S.) a month.

Edward Koplin of engineering firm Jack Dale Associates told Information Week magazine earlier this year that the annual cost for powering a 100,000-square-foot data centre would be about $6-million. Putting those various estimates together suggests that Google is spending anywhere from $50-million to $100-million a year just for the power to run its network.

In fact, according to Internet entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, when Google co-founder Larry Page was asked what was the major limiting factor on Google's continued growth, he replied: "Electricity." Both Microsoft and Yahoo are likely in the same boat, as they rush to build competing data centres. Microsoft has said it plans to spend $1.5-billion over the next year on hardware, in an attempt to match Google.

It's an issue that affects companies no matter how many machines they have. In a research paper late last year, Luiz Andre Barroso -- a senior Google engineer -- said that if current power trends in desktop computers continue, powering a single PC in a data centre could soon cost more (over the lifetime of the PC) than buying the computer in the first place. That would significantly change the cost-benefit analysis that companies go through when they make new PC purchases.

Major players are already factoring this into their plans. According to a recent report from Morgan Stanley, Google plans to start using processors from Advanced Micro Devices in its servers, rather than chips from industry leader Intel Corp. The main reason for the switch? AMD's latest chips use less power to offer the same amount of processing strength. (Intel is working on lower-power chips too.)

That increase in efficiency means a significant boost in computing power without a corresponding rise in operating costs, and that's an important difference whether you're Google or a medium-sized business that is expanding its data centre. Computer maker Dell has also said that it will start using AMD chips in some of its corporate server products, after years of exclusively using Intel processors. Again, one of the main reasons for the switch: lower power consumption.

More than one computer network has been brought low by something as simple as a power cord getting kicked out of its socket by the cleaning staff. As PCs and data centres become a larger part of the business world, power demands could be a weak spot, not just for a giant like Google but for corporations of all kinds.