• Google Plans Data Center in Finland

    • By: Rich Miller
      February 12th, 2009

    Google has bought a former paper mill in southeastern Finland and is likely to convert the facility into a data center, the company said today. Google will pay $51.6 million for the site, and expects to close on the purchase by the end of the first quarter. 

    Google (GOOG) has been slowing its data center development in the United States, recently idling a scheduled project in Oklahoma. But the company continues to invest in land deals in Europe in preparation for future data center expansion. In November Google purchased 185 acres of farmland in Kronstorf, Austria for future development as a data center.

    The facility in Summa, Finland was owned by the paper company Stora Enso, which halted production in January 2008, citing a decline in demand for newsprint. The sale was announced this morning. Stora Enso and Google have agreed that part of the mill site will be transferred to the City of Hamina for “other industrial uses.”

    At its peak, the mill produced more than 500,000 tons a year of newsprint and magazine paper. At a time when the newspaper industry is being hit by layoffs and closures, the facility’s shift from a newsprint mill to a data center powering online services is being noted by PaidContent as symbolic of a broader economic shift.

    See our overview of Google’s European data centers and our Google Data Center FAQ for additional infromation on the company’s data center infrastructure.

    RELATED STORIES:

    About

    Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.

    • Sign up for the Data Center Knowledge Newsletter

    Get daily email alerts direct to your inbox.

    Special Report « MIT Sloan Management Review

    Posted April 7th, 2009

    [...] More recently, Google demonstrated the ability to use what is “at hand” for new purposes: Google recently purchased a paper mill in Finland. Not to make paper, for sure, but to secure a good site for a new server farm. A paper mill, the [...]

    Pete Lundin

    Posted August 11th, 2010

    For Google the reason to chose this location was renewable energy close by. Moreover Finland is ideal for cooling.

    Add Your Comments

      RESOURCE LINKS:

Sign up for the Data Center Knowledge Newsletter

Get daily email alerts direct to your inbox.

ARCHIVED ARTICLES