Alphabet Inc’s Google yesterday announced that it has purchased a plot of land in Tainan as the global search giant looks to set up a second data center in Taiwan.
Mountain View, California-based Google’s existing data center in Taiwan covers 15 hectares in Changhua County and was one of the company’s first in Asia.
The company invested US$600 million in the Changhua County facility, which opened in 2013, Google said.
Google purchased 10 megawatts of solar power for the center earlier this year in an effort to comply with the Electricity Act (電業法), which oversees the use of renewable energy sources by large companies.
It has since provided numerous internships to Taiwanese students, some of whom have joined the company, while also providing other job opportunities, Google said.
The US company said it would continue to expand its Data Center Community Grant Program, which grants between NT$20,000 and US$100,000 to selected nonprofit and public organizations, as it looks to counterbalance the effects of data centers on the surrounding area and communities, a company statement said.
Google did not provide details about the financial terms for the center.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
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