Google expands… again
Google is planning to expand their worldwide infrastructure even further after announcing that they have just purchased an additional 60 acres of land for $3.13M in Lenoir, North Carolina. Lenoir has previously already been selected as a location for the search engine’s servers when Google announced in January 2007 they have purchased a large area of land in the county for the construction of a $600M data center. The Lenoir facility was opened in May this year.
Google’s operations manager for the existing Lenoir facility, Tom Jacobik has previously stated that the location chosen was a strategic decision made by the company. Google have been promised by local and state leaders that they would receive more than $100M in takes breaks over 30 years for building in the county. Compare this to Microsoft’s $20.7M tax abatement deal for the construction of their San Antonio center, Clearly google are eating a bigger slice of cake.
Even though Google has slowed their pace of expansion in the Lenoir county, they are still taking large strides forward in the expansion of their services. It is however, very hard to determine the scale and size of Google’s network worldwide due to the absolute secrecy of their data center locations, Especially in the United States. Google also list all of their IP addresses to their Mountain View, California address, So when you do a WHOIS look-up, You will not know where you are looking. To make it even more secretive, Google usually seeks permits for their projects using companies (LLCs) that don’t mention Google. Below are some locations of Google’s current locations.
Worldwide Google Data centers
European Google Data center
US Google Data center
Google have got a fairly expansive network which is forever growing and evolving, But they do base their location decsisions around a number of criteria which include:
- Large volumes of cheap energy
- Green energy. Focuses on renewable power sources.
- Proximity to rivers and lakes. They use a boatload (pun!) of water for cooling purposes.
- Large areas of land. Allows for greater privacy and security.
- The distance between existing Google data centers. (Connection speed & latency).
- Tax incentives.
Google's first server rack, Data Center & Close up of Google's server rack.
Google is said to be also looking at sites in Asia for locations as well as Lithuania in Eastern Europe. So it will be interesting to see which location Google next choose to build their center(s)
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