Google on Wednesday gave its users a first-ever view of its data centers, with a virtual visit of its server farms around the world from the US heartland to Finland.

The Internet giant posted a series of photographs and "street views" of a half-dozen data centers on a page called "Where the Internet Lives," at http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/.

"We literally get dozens if not hundreds of requests for data center tours" from journalists, technologists and others, said Joe Kava, senior director of Google data centers.

"We can't do that. The security and privacy of our users data is our foremost concern. But since we can't accommodate the public coming inside we wanted to bring the inside out to the public."

The pages offers views inside and outside eight Google data centers in the US and Europe. Others will be put online later.

Kava said Google has nine operational data centers with four more under construction.