Google has unveiled a massive nearly billion-pound investment planned for Britain, with a small English town chosen as the home of an incoming data centre.
The California-based multi-billion dollar tech firm has chosen Waltham Cross, a town of fewer than 12,000 people in Hertfordshire, as the base of its first-ever data centre in the UK.
Google has built nearly two dozen such centres across four continents since 2003, primarily in North America, where the company was originally founded in 1998.
According to the company, the expansive facilities help “keep the internet humming 24/7” and house a combination of data drives, compute nodes, internal and external networking, operations software, and more.
The firm adds that the centres help “support local economies and job creation”, a benefit the Government has hailed following this week’s announcement.
Today, Google announced that Britain’s first data centre would be worth £790million ($1billion) and built on a 33-acre plot of land in Waltham Cross the company purchased in 2020.
The site, which is due for completion in 2025, will help ensure Google Cloud customers and other users can reliably access digital services in the UK, the company said.
Gmail, Google Search, Maps and more are among the services the centres power, and the UK’s will have the added benefit of supporting AI innovation development.
Ruth Porat, the president of Alphabet and Google, said the centre “represents our latest investment in the UK and the wider digital economy at large”.
Rishi Sunak hailed the development as a testament to the UK’s status as a leading European tech economy.
The Prime Minister said: “The UK is a fantastic place to invest, and Google’s $1billion investment is testament to the fact that the UK is a centre of excellence in technology and has huge potential for growth.
“Foreign investment creates jobs and grows all regions of our economy and investments like this will help to drive growth in the decade ahead.”
He added: “I will continue to back businesses to invest and innovate here in the UK.”
Lewis Cocking, Leader of Broxbourne Council, which administers Waltham Cross, said the investment shows the local area’s “growing importance as a hub for technology and innovation”.
He concluded: “Through this development and others, this part of the Borough is attracting millions of pounds of investment which will improve the local economy and create thousands of jobs.”
