14 DAY TRIAL // The world’s biggest Internet company is reportedly planning to spend some €600 million, which is about $773 million, for a new data center in the Netherlands. The operation will take about four years and the data center will serve the company’s European operations.
During a news conference in Eemshaven, some 215 kilometers (133 miles) from Amsterdam, Francois Sterin, director of global infrastructure at Google, explained the decision.
“We know this are well, there is available land and there a favorable climate for us,” he said, adding that Google is to have a workforce of 150 at the location once the construction is completed.
Bloomberg notes that the Dutch government has been trying to attract heavyweights in its new industrial center. Henk Kamp, the minister of Economic Affairs, said that they’ve been looking at other companies than Google too, including Microsoft.
Not only will Eemshaven provide the right natural resources for Google to cheaply power up its data center by using green energy, but this is also close enough to the coast where we can find the high-speed transatlantic fiber optic cable that connects the United States and Europe.
Google sets more roots in Europe
Google has several other data centers in Europe, including in this area. For instance, the ones from Finland and Belgium are quite close by, and there’s also another one in Ireland.
Work for the new data center will start in 2016 and an estimated 1,000 construction workers will work to raise the building. It is expected that the facility will become operational in 2017, as per Sterin’s estimates.
“We have been growing very fast here and there might be a chance for more improvement,” he said.
Google handles about 90 percent of all searches in Europe and its dominance of the search engine market in the area has caused quite a few problems for the Internet company.
Google is also doing its best to avoid the reach of the National Security Agency in the United States, because the location of its data centers dictates what laws the company follows when it comes to the use and transfer of data.
By building its data center abroad, Google is going to store a lot of data in this location, well away from NSA’s reach. Since the company will have to follow local law when it comes to sharing any information, not the ones in the United States, which should make people’s data safer.