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Asian Nations Battle for Google Data Center
1sockchuck writes "Google is pitting foreign governments against one another in a battle for a major new data center in Asia. In the past week, both the prime minister of Malaysia and economic minister of Taiwan have said their countries are leading candidates for the Google project, with Japan, South Korea, India and Vietnam also mentioned as contenders in an 18-nation site selection process. Google typically invests $600 million in each new data center. Tech companies often use multi-site searches as a tool to coax incentives out of local governments, which sweeten their offers to outbid rivals from other regions. Google's Asian initiative appears to be taking this strategy to a new level, coaxing heads of state to invest political capital in their lust for one of Google's mega-datacenters."
A very good friend of mine is a Filipino, and the first time I talked about RPGs he thought I was referring to rocket-propelled grenades. Seriously. (And he used to live in the safe area.)
Things are more stable now (especially around Manilla), but there are regions you don't want to go to. A lot of people also drive around in cars with tinted windows: the police are less likely to pull you over because they don't know who's inside and don't want to get in trouble for pulling over the wrong person. Again, better then what was happening in the '80s, but hardly ideal.
My best guess for the winner would be Japan, especially in a southern region. You don't have to worry about the government going into your data (like China), and most of the other countries are with-in a decent fibre run of Japan. Taiwan you have to worry about hurting China's feelings (and the possibility of an eventual invasion). Quite a few cities in S. Korea are with-in artillery distance of N. Korea (even though relations have improved recently).
India should probably get its own, separate, data centre, with a bunch of fibre connections perhaps going to the MIddle East (especially to the UAE).
My $0.02.
I live in North Carolina and all this has come up recently with one they are building here. Basically, these are very poor tools for job creation. Only a very few employees of the data centers are highly paid engineers; most of the employees do relatively low-paying (for the IT industry, anyway) jobs of HW maintenance and site maintenance. Even if the jobs were halfway decent, even those huge data centers just don't need very many people to run them. In a shop like Google's, where the servers consist of rack after rack of the exact same thing, there just isn't much of the high change-ticket volume that drives the work at most corporate data centers.
Personally, I disagree very strongly with the sweetheart deal that they were handed here in NC. They are getting more-or-less complete freedom from taxes for a great many years on the facility, while sucking fairly large amounts of power out of the local grid, using not-plentiful water for cooling, and creating very few jobs. Little to none of the high-paying jobs will come out of the local labor pool.
SirWired
I haven't posted in years although I still read Slashdot everyday; but since the Philippines was being mentioned, I just had to post a comment on the replies to the parent post. I just hope my post gets modded up, so it can be read, since my posts have never been modded up.
I am a Filipino. I am an employee of one of the largest multinational OEM computer manufacturers in the world. We have many expats working in our offices and they are comfortable working in our business district and other central areas of commerce, as well as living in our posh areas of residence.
I would say that the Philippines is far from being the front runner, mainly for the relative lack of broadband capacity in comparison to countries like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. Our government, or even the private sector, haven't invested in our broadband infrastructure to make us competitive with other Asian countries.
The PERCEPTION of instability is another factor that works against my country. I say perception because the actual threats of military, communist, and Muslim terrorists and rebels, have never hindered the business activities of multinational or foreign companies doing business here, especially, if they are located in our business district or other central areas of commerce.
Most rebel and terrorist activity are far away from the capital, far enough such that, most Filipinos working in the capital consider it a world away. The problems in the south never enter our minds. We feel safe here, safe enough for many Filipinos to stay and raise their family, even though they would be qualified to work abroad.
The only reason why Filipinos would want to work abroad is their desire to earn more income. If ever I felt that my family would no longer be safe while we live in Metro Manila, I would have no problem packing our bags and migrating to another country. My brother works in the US as a doctor and he is planning on returning here. If it weren't safe here, I would advise him to stay there just as I advised him to stay there because of the dire financial status of doctors here in the Philippines.
Microsoft and HP maintain a presence here, and are steadily growing their workforce because of the availability of manpower and the excellent english and technical skills of my people. Many more American, Canadian, and multinational companies are setting up branches here in the country in order to outsource various portions of their business processes.
A bigger and more important threat to companies thinking of doing business here, has always been the financial instability of the country (mostly brought on by the PERCEIVED political and military threats) and the lack of buying power due to the low wages of most Filipinos. However, it is the low wages, combined with the english and professional skills of my people, that make my country attractive to outside investors.
What most foreigners don't realize is that we have posh areas and poor areas. You can live and stay in the posh areas without ever seeing the poor areas. It's like you can make believe you're in an industrialized nation. Just like people in industrialized nations are never aware of the poverty in other countries, you can also ignore poverty in our country if you choose to.
Trust me, it is possible to live in your own safe and perfect little world, here in the Philippines, without ever being affected by the problems in the impoverished and unstable regions of the country. Most of the wealthy people here do exactly that and most foreigners working here are considered wealthy by the living standards here.
By our living standards, most foreigners from industrialized nations can live like a king off of their savings here. They would be treated like a king or queen. They could have a big house with maids, nannies, a driver, all attending to their needs - which they couldn't get in their own country because they couldn't afford it. In our country they can because real estate and manp