Google to spend $3.3B to expand European data centers

Google said Friday it will spend 3 billion euros (US$3.3 billion) to expand its European data centers over the next two years.

In a blog post, CEO Sundar Pichai said the search-engine giant will invest next year an additional 600 million euros into its data center in Hamina, Finland, bringing the total investment in the site to 2 billion euros.

Pichai later held a joint press conference with Finnish Prime Minister Antti Rinne to discuss the massive investment. Rinne called it “fantastic news” for the country.

“Our Hamina data center is a significant driver of economic growth and opportunity,” Pichai wrote earlier. “It also serves as a model of sustainability and energy efficiency for all of our data centers.”

Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), bought the Hamina site from paper firm Stora Enso in 2009. The location is close to the Russian border and uses seawater from the Gulf of Finland to reduce energy used in cooling.

Google’s other European data centers are located in the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium.

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Story by ProactiveInvestors