Google is making it very clear that it is in Finland for a long term by injecting 450 million Euros into beefing up its Finnish datacenter. This is basically more than doubling its investment into a datacenter that is cooled by seawater. This is obviously quite expensive, and it is a move to increase bandwidth as mobile video demand rises rapidly.
Google spent 200 million Euros to acquire the property and convert it into a datacenter, along with an added 150 million Euros to restore its machine hall, which is due for completion early next year.
The amount of workers at the facility will rise from 90 to 125, which is a direct result of the expansion.
"Google is in Finland for the long term," Dieter Kern, manager of the data center, told reporters in Hamina, about 150 kilometers east of Helsinki. "We're digging deep roots, both figuratively and in a concrete way."
The facility is powered by wind power from Sweden. Furthermore, Google signed a deal earlier in the year to purchase the entire output of a new 24-turbine wind farm in the north section of Finland.
Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, is 100 percent behind this initiative. He believes that companies investing in datacenters will reduce their energy tax similar to the level of other industrial companies in the country.
"This is one of the biggest foreign direct investments into Finland," Katainen told reporters. "These extensive investments also say something about Finland. We're able to offer a competitive environment to international companies."
This datacenter facility in Finland is one of the three Google-owned datacenters in Europe. The other two are located in Dublin, Ireland, and St Ghislain, Belgium.
Interestingly enough, Google isn't the only company working on new datacenters in Finland. Microsoft is also doing a similar thing after its proposed buyout of Nokia's device and services unit. Microsoft said it would open a datacenter in the country to serve European customers. This datacenter could cost the software giant 250 million Euros.
