Thursday, February 14, 2019
Staff/wire report
SAN FRANCISCO
Google plans to invest more than $13 billion this year on new and expanded data centers and offices across the U.S.
CEO Sundar Pichai announced the news in a blog post Wednesday, emphasizing the company’s growth outside its Mountain View, Calif., home and across the Midwest and South.
“2019 marks the second year in a row we’ll be growing faster outside of the [San Francisco] Bay Area than in it,” he wrote.
Google will build new data centers in Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia. Pichai estimated the construction of the new centers will employ 10,000 workers.
Regarding that Ohio site, Google has announced it will build at $600 million data center in New Albany, a Columbus suburb.
“Google investing in Ohio to open a new data center is great news for our state. This adds to the list of tech companies that are looking here to grow their operations,” Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said in a news release Wednesday. “Ohio has a history of innovation and through Innovate-Ohio, we aim to position our state for this to be true in the future as well. Our administration will embrace a tech and talent strategy that will improve opportunity and the quality of life for everyone.
“When one of the world’s biggest tech companies was looking to invest, they chose Ohio. Ohio is establishing itself as a premier destination for technology investment, and it further strengthens our case that Ohio is becoming the tech capital of the Midwest.”
It makes good political sense for Google to highlight its expansions outside coastal cities, said CFRA Research analyst Scott Kessler. U.S. legislators have paid increasing attention to Google and other big tech companies in the past year, and are considering passing privacy laws to regulate the companies’ reach. Investing more widely across the U.S. could help it curry favor with federal politicians and officials, he said.
Google is focused on expanding its cloud-computing business, a market where it faces stiff competition from larger rivals Amazon and Microsoft.