Google Confirms $600M South Carolina Data Center

miller60 writes "Google continues its furious data center building program in the Carolinas. Today the company announced a $600 million data center in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Google has already begun construction on a $600 million data center project in Lenoir, North Carolina, and is in the permitting process on another huge project in Richland County, South Carolina. Google's appetite for large tracts of land and cheap power are driving the site location process. Similar huge projects in central Washington are already transforming the tiny town of Quincy, where real estate prices have spiked, with open land fetching as much as 10 times its previous value."

Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's appetite for large tracts of land and cheap power are driving the site location process.
 
Peak oil has already happened and we are beginning down the decline curve. "Cheap power" is becoming more scarce with no entity will escape the harsh reality.
 
Google has to face the facts. Pushing pixels around a screen is the really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Re:Nice locations

[FooAtWFU]

Google Maps says it's 558 miles / 8 hours 10 minutes from Berkeley County SC to Washington, DC. By way of comparison, it's just 7 hours 32 minutes from Tampa, Florida. I would not call it "close". Come now. You're in Tennessee? You should know this part of the country better than THAT. Especially if you want to comment on it. Sure, it's five or six hours closer to DC than you, but...

Re:We're not all hillbillies here...

[fessor eli]

That particular location is close to one of the nation's unique cities, Charleston, and is actually a fairly progressive part of the state. Of course, that's "progressive" compared to the rest of the state. (I grew up in another county.) Google will have to decide to get involved in improving the education system if they want long-term growth there, like Toyota has done in my now-home state, Kentucky. Otherwise, they will be importing every employee from elsewhere, and will eventually have trouble drawing top-notch people who have families. Here's hoping that's what they do.

Re:Maps

[ezratrumpet]

South Carolina education is a little deceptive. The schools in the Myrtle Beach area are extraordinary, with high teacher pay, excellent resources, and strong student achievement. Cross the county line, and you find one of the most underfunded and outdated school districts in the United States.

If you're looking for smart, capable people in South Carolina (or California, or Idaho, or wherever), you'll find smart, capable people - as long as compensation is strong.

Most of Google's hires may be from out of state, but they will quickly become South Carolinians through property purchase, taxation, and spending their money within the local service economy.

Teaching them to love Lowcountry shrimp boil will take a few weeks; teaching them to say "y'all" as a pronoun will take a few months; teaching them to refer to all soft drinks as "Coke" takes one to two years. But now I'm offtopic.....

Re:Nice locations

[d3ik]

ShaunC said "If you want cheap tracts of land and cheap electricity, you build a data center in Oklahoma or Kansas".

And if you look it up [wikipedia.org], "Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, and Missouri are entirely within Tornado Alley"...

I don't know what's more irritating, the clowns arguing about something that they missed the premise of in the first place or the people who are arguing with someone who has been to the DISA [disa.mil] data center in OKC.

Re:Resistance is futile

[SirTalon42]

I'm pretty sure I remember reading an article on Slashdot a while back that Google was beginning to run out of space with their current infrastructure (though I think that was several data center announcements ago). Remember that Google pretty much makes their own copy of the internet, as well as having a crap load of data about every single site out there, has to store all the gmail email, all their adsense/adwords data for every customer, and most likely they store all that information in multiple places. Oh yes, can't forget about storing all the videos from youtube/google video, thats probably a LOT of data there, plus its most likely a massive amount of bandwidth as well.

Re:Waste

[nicolas.kassis]

They could always go to Quebec. Cheap Hydro electricity. Cheapest in north America and lots of cheap land. ( they could by themeselves a piece of land the size of texas for almost nothing.)

Re:Maps

[DerekLyons]

Doesn't look like it. I live about a mile from the site. I just looked on Google Maps and Google Earth and I see where it is but the maps do not show that the ground has been broken yet. Trust me, the construction began months ago.

I don't think you or the OP AC realise that Google [Earth|Maps] data is updated on a _very_ irregular basis with an emphasis on large metropolitan areas. (Which Charleston isn't.) Data can be as much as six years out of date.

Re:Maps

[packeteer]

And it will take generations for them to catch onto boiled peanuts.

Re:Maps

[superpulpsicle]

This is not necessarily a 100% draw for experienced talents. Moving to a region with only a small handful of companies leave you at the mercy of the company (google in this case). If you were out in NY or CA packed with jobs, you can always find the next thing when things don't work out. In south carolina you don't have that option. People do not work 10+ years at companies anymore.

You will likely take a paycut since the area is cheaper. After that, you will lose value if you try to move out of SC. I think NC would be a better choice for google.