Google plans $300mn data centre investment in Douglas County
Thu 4 Jun 2015
Search giant Google announced earlier this week that it would be expanding its data centre operations in Douglas County, Georgia, with an investment reaching over $300mn (approx. £195mn).
The expansion, which hopes to create 25 new jobs in the area, is expected to be built next to the existing Lithia Springs data centre, and will join Google’s 12 other global facilities. Construction is expected to begin over the next few months and will be completed and operational by next year.
Based on industry predictions, the investment will equate to an extra 200,000sq.ft of raised floor space for servers and computer equipment. The Lithia Springs centre currently measures 500,000sq.ft.
According to Jason Wellman, data centre operations manager at Google, the search engine firm is looking at plans to develop an even larger expansion, but he added that there were no concrete agreements in place for this.
Experts have pinned Atlanta and Georgia as one of the top markets for the data centre sphere, with its cheap electricity supply, central location and technological advancement. The Douglas County Board of Commissioners has also recently passed a tax incentive programme for data centres in the area.
“Google is not only a good present partner in our economy,” said local governor Nathan Deal, who was present at the announcement. “As soon as that $300mn is on that piece of property, [Google will] be an even more astounding presence in our economic society of Georgia.
“Increasingly, as I talk to economic development prospects, they cite the availability of high-speed internet in the metro Atlanta region,” he added. “Having that capacity makes it possible.”
The Google investment is the latest major tech investment in the region. It follows the company’s announcement in January that it would be establishing a gigabit-per-second service to nine cities in Metro Atlanta – 100 times the speed provided to the average residential U.S. surfer.
