Google Will Spend Billions to Expand Data Centers Across the US

Google’s servers are migrating South in 2021. And East. And North. And Midwest.

Yesterday, CEO Sundar Pichai announced Google’s plan to invest $7+ billion in offices and data centers across the US. On the list: data facilities in South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Nebraska, and Nevada.

Physical footprint

We pitched this story on a Hangouts video call, researched it via Google Search, and wrote it in a Google Doc; you might be reading it in Gmail. Those tools—plus web advertising, third-party cloud services, and more—are powered by Google’s data centers.

If you somehow sneaked into one of these cinder block buildings, before being tackled by security, you’d see a data hall full of blinking black servers.

• Google was operating more than 2.3 million servers as of 2015. Given the growth of Google Cloud alone, that number has likely shot up since.

The flip side: These facilities have staggering environmental costs. Data centers consume 10x to 50x more energy per square foot than your average commercial office building, according to Energy.gov—and altogether, they’re responsible for ~2% of all US electricity use.

• Just one Google data center reportedly uses 1-4 million gallons of water a day to cool servers.