I remember when I first started working for ZDNet (part of CNet) in Australia how achingly cool I thought their office was compared to the newsroom of the daily newspaper I previously worked in. Oh, how good they must be to their staff, I thought when I arrived for an interview  – bean bags, arcade games and a view of Darling Harbour in Sydney.

Then Google came along. Our offices almost looked meagre in comparison – even though they were still amazing for a 20-something-year-old in Sydney. Google, however, made it clear to us tech reporters on our visit that their aim was to attract the best of the best in the technology industry, and this beautiful working space was part of the reward for being the best.

That was the first thing that came to mind when I first saw that Google, instead of allowing tours of its “very private” and “very secure” data center, it decided to release some images instead. Taken by Connie Zhou, these could almost be viewed as the Annie Leibovitz take on the data center world. They show a world that is on so glossy, shiny, colourful, with so much depth. They make data centres look beautiful, and not just for the IT geek or the engineer.

I asked Joe Kava – Google’s Head of Data Centers – if this is what Google’s data centers look like all of the time. Apart from the odd slow aperture on the photographer’s camera, he says it is. So you can guess what my next question was – it regarded the response of newcomers to Google’s data center environment. His answer surprised me, and offered a little more insight into the psyche of the workers of this industry I write about.

“It depends - you have two categories. Some have never worked in a data center before and they don’t know what to expect. They come in and say ‘wow, this is big -  I now have a lot of machines I have to work on’,” Kava says.

“Others that have worked in and around more traditional colo facilities or maybe private data centers come in and they are a little bit  ‘wow, this is much, much bigger than anything I have ever worked in before’.”

“But while most data center racks are nice powder coated steel and servers themselves are usually enclosed in nice painted skins, ours are all open and exposed.”

The images do show off the size of the facility, with a sense of grandeur. But for Kava, the real beauty to the operators that step foot inside is not the mood lighting, but the synchronicity inhow it all works together, as on well-oiled machine.

“It is when they understand how the systems work together, how servers communicate and really act as one massive computer as opposed to thousands of individual servers. That is when they understand how this elegant dance is really being orchestrated – it really acts as a warehouse sized computer.”

This dance I sonly witnessed by a few, which is why Kava and the Google team sought to bring us these beautiful data center images.

“Instead of letting the public in we thought we would bring the inside to them,” Kava said.

The images, compiled as a project called Where the Internet Lives, combine photography with Google’s Street View, the end result putting my original Google office tour to shame.

I asked Kava if these images, however, would ever make it to the walls of head office. “I am going to have some framed and put outside the office of my team,” Kava said. But grand images require a grand showcase right? “I might try get the marketing team to put some of those more spectacular pictures in the Google memorabilia cases.”

Fitting I think, as these images won’t be current for long at the pace that Google likes to innovate.

You can read Google's blog on the project here and view more Google images from Where the Internet Lives here.