I'm quite skeptical of the data centers in space claim, but I think a proof of concept can certainly be achieved in five years. I'm less convinced that we'll ever see widescale deployment of data center satellites.

And to be fair, I've read that Google's timelines for this project extend far beyond a 5 year horizon. I think it's a rational research direction for them, since it gets people excited and historically many space-related innovations have been repurposed to benefit other industries. Best case scenario would be that research done in support of this data centers in space project leads to innovations that can be applied towards normal data centers.

Someone can build a server in space, pairing a puny underpowered rack with a handful of servers to a ginormous football field sized solar panel plus a heat radiator plus a heavy as hell insulated battery to survive being a planet shade every hour for tens of minutes. We can do that from existing components and launch on existing rockets, no problem.

Why though?

Why would anyone need a server in space in the first place? What is a benefit for that location, necessitating a cost an order of magnitude higher (or more) compared to a warehouse anywhere on the planet?

Do data centers on Earth have no employees present, and none who ever come on site for the life of the data center? Prove that out on earth and I will start to believe your space data center.

Try asking for a 24/7 multi-gig data connection to a space server. Space suddenly doesnt seem so big once you start playing around with RF allocations.