Google To Spend Billions On European Data Centres

Google is to add to its European data centre portfolio investments, with an additional 3 billion euros (£2.6bn) over the next two years.

The new money is to be used to expanded its European data centres, chief Executive Sundar Pichai said during a visit to Finland.

It comes after Google in May this year announced that it would spend about 600 million euros (£530m) to build a new data centre facility in Hamina, on Finland’s south coast near the Russian border.

Data centre

That new facility is to complement an existing Google data centre in Hamina, constructed at a cost of about 800 million euros in the former Stora Enso paper mill that the search engine firm purchased in 2009.

The current Hamina data centre is one of Google’s most advanced and efficient, with a cooling system that uses seawater from the Gulf of Finland.

The 3 billion euros investments includes the 600m euros investment set aside for the Hamina data centre in Finland.

This means that Google will have spent a total investment in the site of 2 billion euros, Finland’s Prime Minister Antti Rinne was quoted by Reuters as telling a joint news conference.

“This is fantastic news for Finland,” Rinne reportedly said.

Google currently operates some 58 data centres around the world, and has invested more than 4.3 billion euros to build five facilities in Europe since 2007.

The company’s Hamina complex is to be powered by renewable energy from three new wind farms in Finland, Google said last year.

The company’s other European data centres are in the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium.

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