Google said on Wednesday it would spend more than $13 billion on data centers and offices in the United States this year.
“These new investments will give us the capacity to hire tens of thousands of employees, and enable the creation of more than 10,000 new construction jobs in Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.
With the new investment Google will now be in 24 out of the 50 states in the U.S, Reuters reported. Google did not reveal the specific investment on data centers in the U.S.
The worldwide cloud infrastructure spending grew 46 percent to nearly $23 billion in Q4 2018. Total Capex on cloud infrastructure in 2018 exceeded $80 billion vs $55 billion in 2017, according to research firm Canalys.
Canalys Principal Analyst Matthew Ball said: “Market dynamics have changed over the last 12 months, with more businesses opting for multi-cloud and hybrid-IT environments to use the strengths of different cloud service providers and deployment models dependent on application and data requirements, compliance, cost and performance.”
Apple in December 2018 said it plans to invest $10 billion in US data centers over the next five years, including $4.5 billion this year and next.
Apple is currently expanding its data centers in North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. Apple’s new data center is coming up at Waukee in Iowa. Apple said its data centers are powered by 100 percent renewable energy.
Google will expand its presence in Chicago and Washington, and the company’s workforce would double in Virginia and Georgia.
The company said it had hired more than 10,000 people in the United States and made over $9 billion in investments in the last year.
Google reported $31.07 billion in costs and expenses, registering 26 percent increase from last year, for the fourth quarter. Capital expenditure of Google rose 64 percent to $7.08 billion.
Last week, Reuters reported Amazon.com was exploring alternatives to locate part of its new headquarters in New York in case the plan fails due to local opposition.
Rajani Baburajan
