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Google Data Center Spending Up Slightly

Google Data Center Spending Up Slightly

By: Rich Miller
April 16th, 2010
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Google (GOOG) continues to invest in its data centers, but there’s no sign of an imminent return the huge spending seen in 2007 and 2008. Google invested $239 million in capital spending on its IT infrastructure in the first quarter of 2010, a slight uptick from the $221 million it spent in the fourth quarter. The company’s capital expenditures (CapEx) have trended modestly higher over the last four quarters, but remain at about a quarter of what the company spent at the height of its data center building program. Here’s a look at the recent trend in Google’s capital expenditures:

1Q 2006: $345 million
2Q 2006: $699 million
3Q 2006: $492 million
4Q 2006: $367 million
1Q 2007: $597 million
2Q 2007: $575 million
3Q 2007: $553 million
4Q 2007: $678 million

1Q 2008: $842 million
2Q 2008: $698 million
3Q 2008: $452 million
4Q 2008:$368 million
1Q 2009: $263 million
2Q 2009: $139 million
3Q 2009: $186 million
4Q2009: $221 million
1Q2010: $239 million

The capex “breather” has been enabled by the company’s building boom in 2007-08, during which it announced major data center construction projects in Lenoir, North Carolina; Goose Creek, South Carolina; Pryor, Oklahoma and Council Bluffs, Iowa. Google has not announced any new data center builds in the U.S. since June 2007, and confirmed just one international project in 2009 in Hamina, Finland.

After the economic meltdown gripped Wall Street in the third quarter of 2008, Google throttled back spending even further, opting to delay construction of its data center in Pryor.

About Rich Miller

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.