Google is trying to make sure users have enough support in the region

Dec 11, 2013 14:11 GMT  ·  By

After it has just announced that it was quitting plans to build up a data center in Hong Kong, Google opened its first two data centers in Asia – in Taiwan and Singapore.

According to Reuters, the huge data centers will cater to Google’s growing business in the area. However, by choosing Taiwan and Singapore, it shows once more that companies such as Google have quite a lot of issues when trying to provide services for people living in Asia – India is hard to access because of all the regulations, while China’s Great firewall isn’t too encouraging either.

“While we’ve been busy building, the growth in Asia’s Internet has been amazing. The number of Internet users in India doubled, from 100 million to 200 million. It took six years to achieve that milestone in the United States,” said Joe Kava, Google data centers vice president.

Furthermore, given the fact that there are a lot more people who have yet to connect to the Internet in Asia, the two data centers seem quite useful.

“It’s no secret that the Taiwanese ecosystem for technology companies is outstanding. Being close to the technology companies will give us opportunities to further some of our partnerships,” Kava said.

Google has reportedly shelled out $600 million (€436 million) in Taiwan, as compared to the $120 million (€87 million) spent on the data center from Singapore. The importance of the first data center was also obvious from the way they were opened – executives and media were brought in to celebrate the Taiwan opening on Wednesday, while the Singapore one was much more subdued.

As mentioned, just yesterday, Google announced that it had canceled plans to build a data center in Hong Kong, blaming the lack of land for expansion in the area. However, it will continue hiring for the new large office it has in the region.