The Google Barge Explained: What Happened To Google’s Offshore Showrooms

Unfortunately, the Google Barge was not long for this earth. Just one year after they were unveiled, the city of Portland revealed that their city’s version of the new center was sold and divided between its overall structure and its individual containers. While the structure would be sold to what the Press Herald describes as an “international barging company,” the containers would be torn down and scrapped for parts.

The strange thing about these barges was that they were never actually put to use. According to The Wall Street Journal, none of the four barges that were built officially opened due to potential structural dangers. The United States Coast Guard issued a safety inquiry into the structures and found an abnormal division of fuel across the structures.

“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.

In layperson’s terms, they feared that even a minor malfunction could result in a massive fire. Not much else is known about the back-and-forth between the Coast Guard and Google, but there were seemingly attempts to reach a structural compromise, according to Consumerist. However, they simply were not feasible, forcing Google to cancel the project just one year after its mysterious reveal. That being said, even if the structure was deemed safe, it simply sounded too exclusive of an idea to effectively market. At least we have Google Stores now.

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