Global search engine giant Google Inc plans to double its investment in its new data center in Taiwan to US$600 million, in response to the fast-growing numbers of Internet users in the Asia-Pacific region.
“While we’ve been busy building, the growth in Asia’s Internet has been amazing,” Joe Kava, vice president of Google’s data centers unit, said yesterday at the opening of the company’s data center at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park (彰化濱海工業區).
As Internet users in Asia account for half of global users, Google will boost its investment from the planned US$300 million to US$600 million, Kava said.
Photo: Chen Ping-hung, Taipei Times
Sitting on 15 hectares, the data center is the Mountain View, California-based company’s largest center in Asia. Google has more than 60 full-time employees assigned to perform tasks and maintain equipment at the Changhua center.
Kava said the facility is built to be energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. While the data center can work by cooling water at night when temperatures are cooler, it can also store the cooled water in large insulated tanks to cool servers during daytime, Kava said.
The Changhua center uses only about half of the power consumed by standard data centers on a daily basis, he added.
Google announced in 2011 its plan to build data centers in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong. The company later canceled the plan to set up a center in Hong Kong, and opted to expand the one in Taiwan to serve users in Asia, Kava said.
The US company expects to inaugurate its new US$120 million data center in Jurong West, Singapore, later this month, the company said.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS