Google has today provided some details on its plans for expansion in 2018 within the US. These plans include a significantly larger office and data center presence across fourteen US States. In some cases, the expansion will see new offices and data centers emerging, while in other cases it will be a matter of expanding infrastructure at existing locations.
The blog post on this comes directly from Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, who announced a $2.5 billion investment project relevant to just five of those states – Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia and Oklahoma. As part of that particular investment, Pichai confirmed he was in attendance today in Clarksville/Montgomery County in Tennessee for the opening of the first of the company’s new data centers. As for the other nine states, Pichai confirmed development was in place to either expand current offices or open new ones in California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. The image at the bottom of this article visually highlights Google’s plans for the year ahead by showing the company’s current distribution of offices and data centers, as well as the new areas Google has pegged for new and/or expansion of facilities.
In the wider scheme of things, Pichai explained its data centers already employ around 1,900 people, while suggesting the number of jobs created through a combination of its current construction and renewable energy efforts is in the 1000s. With 1000s more jobs expected to become available in due course through the expansion plans detailed today – in line with comments made by the company earlier this month during the provision of its Q4 2017 earnings call. Pichai noted this sort of expansion which varies across the country is not only “essential to the development of our products” but also to “bringing diverse perspectives” to the company. While the expansion plans detailed here are specific to the US, this is only part of Google’s growth ambitions with the company making a number of investments in other parts of the globe as well. Including the development of a substantial UK-based headquarters in London which is also expected to maintain and generate a number of jobs in the country.
