28 May 2019

Google picks Finland for new data center

 Google is about to invest 600 million euros, about US$670 million in a new data center in Finland, the company announced on monday.

 The new server farm will be located in Hamina, where the tech giant previously opened a data center in 2011. The new data centre will be located on the premises of the former Summa paper factory lot, just like the first data centre in Hamina that Google opened in 2011. This brings Google’s total investments in Hamina to 1.4 billion euros..

The Mountain View, California-based company currently has 58 data centers around the world. In Europe, it has invested more than 4.3 billion euros in five such facilities since 2007 and its accrued capital expenditures for the first quarter came to $4.5 billion, comprising spending on data centers, servers and office facilities.

 The expansion in Finland comes as Google is pushing into video gaming with its new streaming service Stadia, which will allow players to access the action through the web without expensive consoles or personal computers. Stadia runs through the company’s YouTube video-streaming platform and requires the data-center network to function. Google’s Hamina complex will be powered by renewable energy acquired from three new wind farms in the Nordic nation, it said last year.

Way to go, Hamina!