What Happened To Those Google Barges?

Remember a year ago, when Google-constructed barges popped up in the waters off San Francisco and Portland (the one in Maine)? They were supposed to be floating showrooms, but they never opened and have since been towed away or sold. But what exactly caused Google to scuttle its seafaring plans?

According to the Wall Street Journal, fire-safety concerns from the U.S. Coast Guard ultimately made the costly project not worth seeing through.

“These vessels will have over 5,000 gallons of fuel on the main deck and a substantial amount of combustible material on board,” wrote the Coast Guard’s acting chief of commercial vessel compliance, in a March 27, 2013 e-mail (uncovered via a Freedom of Information Act request) to Google’s barge contractor, Foss Maritime Co.

The Coast Guard and private fire-safety companies provided Foss and Google with a 20-page document detailing everything that would need to be done to make the barges safe for use by the public.

Google had hoped to have around 1,200 people each day visit the barge in San Francisco, telling the Coast Guard that there would be no more than 150 people on board the ship at any given time. But the Coast Guard said these were just numbers.

“I am unaware of any measures you plan to use to actually limit the number of passengers,” wrote the acting chief, who also expressed concern that Google and Foss had done so much work so quickly on these barges “without full consent of the Coast Guard.”

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