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Google Buys Finnish Paper Mill
raffnix writes "Today, Finland-based paper group Stora Enso has announced that Google is buying the buildings and most of the Summa Mill site, where production of paper was ceased last month, for approximately 40 million Euros ($51.7 million). Obviously the space is most likely going to serve as a data center, which has now also been confirmed by
Reuters."
Shows what the media knows. Haven't they heard of GMail Paper? Here's the spiel from Google:
With Google's ad revenue suffering due to economic conditions, I imagine they need this new source of revenue very badly. For those who are curious, Wikipedia has a great article detailing the history of this new venture by Google.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No, I see what Google's angle is. Get everybody using computers, move away from paper, and once nobody else is making paper suddenly Google will come out with the latest hot product only available on paper! And you have to have this product; nay, you need this product. You couldn't face your friends and family without it. This plan is so cunning, so clever, so devious, you could stick a tail on it and call it Karl Rove.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I thought everyone new that due to the advent of Internet and Google (docs, mail, etc) *ALL* Paper Mills were Finnished.
wow.
A paper mill is just a big building. I use to work for a company where the building use to be an old saw mill. Heck the house I live in use to be a small Candy Factory.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They just need industrial space. It just so happens that paper mills, like data centers need a lot of electricity.
Which is cheap if your grid is fed by a hydroelectric dam (Summa, Finland area does have hydro-power).
Lots of paper mills have gone out of business in the last decade, changing paper use habits has caused this.
This is the second article this week that confuses 2008 with 2009. The other was the article on the LHC startup.
They bought it to print their own currency. By the time it's up an running, the US dollar will be worthless due to inflation. Prudent business decision I must say :-)
last month in January 2008
I knew it! CmdrTaco is a Time Traveller. Getting our news from the past.. brilliant!
Big corporation buys some land to put buildings on. Previous occupant happened to be a paper mill, but who cares? Maybe I'm crazy, but I really don't see what's so newsworthy about this.
I read the internet for the articles.
Are you sure it wasn't Primatech they aquired? That would fit perfectly with their "Don't be evil" motto.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
My co worker tells me they have a power plant on site, so tick the electricity box...
The location is right my the sea, and also handily close to Russia. There's a map in this Helsingin Sanomat article:
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Stora+Enso+closing+Summa+and+Kemij%C3%A4rvi+mills+at+brisk+pace+/1135233375617
So basically they can easily lay cable from and to the site, and they can have excellent connections to Russia without actually having to place the hardware there. (Not that I'm sure it would be an issue these days.)
Also, they can literally put the hardware on a ship and ship it right to the location.
.: Max Romantschuk
Should be "Google to produce hardcopy of Internet"
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
Doesn't sound like google they don't finnish anything half their products are still in beta!
to merely put the newspaper industry's reason for existence into doubt
now google actually has to go out and confiscate newspapers' means of production and forcibly convert paper mills into data centers? talk about insult on top of injury
i think someone at google is taking this whole notion of the digital "revolution" a little too seriously, no? do they assassinate rupert murdoch and demolish the conde nast building next?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, don't know you're just trolling, but FYI the law (Lex Nokia as it is called) has not yet been passed. Also the climate is very favorable, cold winters and not very hot summers...and I suppose the quite cheap electricity, good infrastructure and abundance of highly trained CS engineers in Finland does not hurt.
Paper mills are designed for heavy machines and heavy rolls of paper. That means that they have strong floors which don't flex, and they don't collapse when you put in a few tons of batteries.
Because of this, telcos (which are largely DC operations and have huge battery backups) love defunct printing buildings and use them for switches.
It makes perfect sense that Google would want such a stable, heavy building.
Lex Nokia, which hasn't been passed yet, would allow the employer to monitor his employees email accounts located at company servers. It as absolutely nothing to do with Russia, unless we're talking about Russians who are employed by Google and use Gmail.
I repeat: this law, if it passes, would let the employer read emails sent to or from his own email servers by his employees. I'm pretty sure that's not "unprecedented", at least not outside Finland.
Probably the same as Google's connections with China: the company will do whatever it's told. What does that have to do with anything?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Stora Enso has its headquarters in Finland, but it is both a Finnish and Swedish company. In 1998 Swedish Stora Kopparberg and Finnish Enso-Gutzeit Oy merged into Stora Enso. What is interesting about Stora Kopparberg ("great copper mountain") is that it started out as a copper mining company and is probably the oldest existing corporation in the world. The first shares for Stora came out in 1288.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Well, those buildings might be better than shanty towns but still... Aalto was a fan of functionalism and was an innovite furniture designer, but his buildings are far from efficient and comfortable. Tiny kitchens and bathrooms, small bedrooms and huge livingrooms. Eeerie, dimly lit staircases. National board of antiquities is hell bent to protect the original look and doesn't give permits for visible modifications, renovations have to be according to original design even if it's failed one.
We actually were thinking to buy one of these, but decided against for the reasons listed above.
Aalto is somewhat a holy cow in Finland. You'll usually get bad looks if you critizise his designs. Even if it's valid, like mocking flat roofs which are total disaster in our climate.