News: Google has shared these previously unseen images of its data centres around the world, which feature primary-coloured pipework, cooling rooms that glow green and bicycles for staff to get around (+ slideshow).

A new website called Where The Internet Lives offers virtual tours of eight Google data centres around the world as well as a Google Street View tour of its North Carolina outpost.

The internet giant uses the buildings to process huge amounts of data, including three billion Google search queries a day and 72 hours of YouTube videos a minute.

Each data centre is carefully located and designed to benefit from its surrounding environment. The data centre in Hamina, Finland, which occupies a machine hall designed by Alvar Aalto, uses sea water to cool the building and reduce energy usage.

Small yellow bicycles known as G-bikes are used by Google staff to get around the huge buildings.

The colourful pipes are painted in Google's signature bright colours. The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled.

Bright pink pipes transfer water from the green chillers to an outside cooling tower.

The fibre optic networks connecting Google's sites run along the yellow cable trays near the ceiling and can run at speeds more than 200,000 times faster than a normal home internet connection.

Plastic curtains are hung in the network rooms to act as a barrier, keeping cold air inside to circulate around the machines.

Other Google buildings we've featured on Dezeen include the internet giant's London headquarters and another London office with a seaside theme – see all our stories about Google.

More recently we reported on the Google Web Lab at the Science Museum in London, where visitors can operate robots and play with virtual teleporters.

We previously published photos from inside the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the particle accelerator constructed in a 27km underground tunnel on the border of France and Switzerland.

See all our stories about Google »