Google is exploring European data center location options and as part of that it has reportedly purchased 173 acres of land in the Netherlands, coming after land purchases in Denmark as well as Sweden, stating that it wants to have options before picking a location to begin construction. Google already has data centers in Europe, including one in Eemshaven Netherlands, and has made multiple land purchases so that it can be prepared for an expansion of the existing data centers if it ends up needing to open more.
Though Google has not come to a decision as to where it will build the next data center it will reportedly come to a decision in the near future after it finds where the data center could be the most needed. Google also has a data center in Belgium and although it already has a data center in the Netherlands that doesn’t mean it won’t decide that a new location in the country would be the best spot.
How much Google paid for the land was not mentioned, but if it decides to open the data center there it would be putting a significant amount of money into the Netherlands economy, having already spent 600 million Euros to build the existing data center within the country and after committing to expand on that data center with another 500 million Euro investment. Europe isn’t the only region where Google is looking to expand on its data centers. Earlier this year it was reported that Google would be building a new data center in Osaka, Japan for its Google Cloud Platform, following the opening if a different data center in Tokyo. Google also announced earlier this year that it would be expanding its data enters in the U.S., with plans to build new data centers or expand on ones that were already built in a number of different states including California, Oregon, Washington, and Texas among others.