The last twelve months have been a busy year for the search engine giant Google. We all heard about their big $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube in late 2006. Most of us heard about their brow raising purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. What you don’t hear too much about is that Google has also been gobbling up real estate for data center space.
What’s intriguing is not that Google is building out its data center infrastructure, but where and at what expense to local communities. Their latest expansion takes them to Lenoir, North Carolina. Where? Pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Don’t get us wrong, we love the fact that we’re located in suburbia and not downtown. There are plenty of advantages to being away from a city hot spot. Two hours from the nearest commercial airport is a stretch though … even for us.
The controversy, however, rests with the tax breaks and incentives given to Google and how some local representatives felt “bullied” during the process. In the end, Google agrees to setup shop with a package of tax breaks, infrastructure upgrades, and other goodies valued at $212 million over 30 years, or more than $1million for each of the 210 jobs Google said it eventually hoped to create in Lenoir.
Read the Business Week article for all the details.
