Google is still evaluating market demand and adjusting its plan to build a new data center in Tainan, Google Taiwan managing director of sales and operations Tina Lin (林雅芳) told the Central News Agency on Sunday.
Lin was speaking after the company was questioned last year by city councilors as to why it had not begun construction of the facility after it announced plans to construct the center more than four years ago.
Lin did not give any more details on the Tainan plan, but emphasized that Google was continuing to invest in its data center in Changhua County, its first in Taiwan.
Photo: Hsu Tzu-ling, Taipei Times
She also said that the level of data handled by the center and its service scope has increased fivefold compared with when it opened in 2013, making it Google’s largest data center in Asia.
Google opened its first Japanese center in Inzai City, Chiba Prefecture, in March last year.
Lin said that in addition to building data centers, Google is continuing to ramp up its investment in Taiwan in other ways.
Its second office building in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) is expected to open in the second quarter of this year, following the unveiling of its new office complex in the Taipei Far Eastern Telecom Park (Tpark, 台北遠東通訊園區) in 2021.
The capacity of the second building is more than twice that of the company’s first office and would bring together talent from Google’s other locations, Lin said.
She added that Google’s engineering laboratories in Taiwan are in short supply and that the new office building would house different types of labs to help boost research and development.
Some employees in the hardware department are still working in a range of locations across Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, but the new office means they would all share the same hub, which would help improve coordination and efficiency, Lin said.
The 16-floor office complex in Tpark is Google’s first and largest hardware development base outside the US and features a gym, massage room, rest area and health center for employees.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS