CHANGHUA, Taiwan--Google Inc. (GOOG) is building in Taiwan its third data center in Asia for more than US$300 million as traffic on the U.S. search engine in the region will likely continue to grow robustly.
This is in spite of the region being dominated by local players and, in some countries, issues of restricted data flow owing to political censorship.
The center is being built on a 15-hectare site in mainly agricultural Changhua county of central Taiwan. There will be 25 full-time staff when it comes online as early as the second half of 2013, Google said Tuesday.
The facility will be larger than Google's two other centers--still under construction--at Hong Kong and Singapore. Spending on all three centers will be more than US$700 million.
Google--along with other Internet companies like eBay Inc. (EBAY)--are expanding in Asia where new Web users and traffic are growing as more people use smartphones and tablets to access content that demands more bandwidth.
"More new Internet users are coming online everyday here in Asia than anywhere else in the world," Daniel Alegre, Google's Asia-Pacific president, said at the Taiwan center's ground-breaking ceremony.
Despite huge market potential in Asia, Google is facing an uphill battle to grow in countries like China where it is losing share to local rivals like Baidu Inc. (BIDU).
In 2010 Google rerouted its China search engine via Hong Kong because of censorship concerns. Several southeast Asian countries--including Vietnam and Thailand--have sought to block some sites, including Facebook, to limit political debate online.
Data centers house computers, telecommunications and storage systems and typically include backup power supplies and other security devices.
Google has six data centers across the U.S., one in Finland and one in Belgium.
Google added Tuesday that it will launch a program in Taiwan that provides annual grants between US$5,000 and US$50,000 to organizations developing technology literacy and focussing on renewable energy and new-economy entrepreneurship.
-By Lorraine Luk, Dow Jones Newswires; 8862-25022557; lorraine.luk@dowjones.com
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
No comments:
Post a Comment