it's because Google's data center are geared for one single purpose: crunching massive amounts of data. They can get away with just one hardware platform, fine-tweak it, then design the racks.
Most other companies (99% of the web companies) other there have different needs. For instance, Facebook needs one hardware platform fine-tweaked for the cache, another one for pics and video storage, another one for chat, plus mysql etc.
It's the same for your regular web2.0 company, they want different kinds of servers, so they will ask data centers specific hardware and different server formats. It's therefore very hard, if not impossible, for a data center to copy Google's design, since they have to host so many kind of hardware.
Even so there are many companies that own their own data centers outright. It's intriguing to me that in an industry where a successful company can't exist for longer than a week without being cloned 8-ways from Sunday Google has managed to maintain its uniqueness over the course of a decade. In some ways that's a testament to Google's excellence, but in other ways it's a testament to the very dysfunctional nature of the state of the industry.
It's interesting how potent, and how rare, cross-domain expertise is in this industry. Google deftly coordinates data center operations (including server hardware) and software mastery, giving it a unique and enormous edge over its competitors. Apple weaves together expertise in device hardware, software development, usability, and aesthetics beyond anything its competitors can achieve, giving them significant market dominance and enormous brand prestige. Amazon combines competent large scale web-application hosting and development with highly efficient warehouse and fulfillment operations. It seems as though in this industry melding together expertise in related but seemingly far separated areas is a good recipe for attaining a near unassailable advantage over your competition.
I think it has more to do with the company's core values than the company's expertise.
Most data centers have expertise in data centers operations, but they don't know where to focus. Google is a master in optimization, so they took it to the next level, even in data centers. Apple values design and user experience that it sets the focus on future product development etc.
Not everything Google does is about massively distributed computing. But the work on massively distributed computing payed off in serving images, videos, and doing caching content.
I see the point you are trying to make and even agree with. But it is still a little odd that no one saw the success that is possible with what google did and worked to replicate it.
Most other companies (99% of the web companies) other there have different needs. For instance, Facebook needs one hardware platform fine-tweaked for the cache, another one for pics and video storage, another one for chat, plus mysql etc.
It's the same for your regular web2.0 company, they want different kinds of servers, so they will ask data centers specific hardware and different server formats. It's therefore very hard, if not impossible, for a data center to copy Google's design, since they have to host so many kind of hardware.