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Google Announces Its First Latin-American Data Center
1sockchuck writes "Google continues to expand the global reach of its infrastructure. Today the company announced plans to build its first data center in Latin America, investing $150 million in a facility in Quilicura, Chile. Google cited growing Internet use in Latin America, and said Chile has reliable infrastructure and a business-friendly environment. Last year Google announced plans for three new server farms in the Asia Pacific region, as well as a new data center in Dublin. Over the past year, Google has invested more than $2.5 billion on servers and data centers."
What's the take on this remark? It's either too dumb for a slashdotter or too smart for me. Please pick one and let me know.
::Facepalm::
sudo make me a sandwich
While Chile is a Buddhist country, it's also hugely dependable on foreign aid and earthquakes. Why would Google want to do business there?
Chile is Roman Catholic, also not dependant at all on foreign aid.
We do have earthquakes, but most construction is resistant to it.
"If you're running a Google data center, then where are your backups?"
"Backups? We ain't got no backups. We don't need no backups! I don't have to show you any stinkin' backups!"
South America, much like Africa, is relatively poorly served in regards to local datacenters and backbone network connectivity compared to North America, Europe, and East Asia.
There's a large market there, so it makes sense that companies would start investing in local resources to serve that market.
"Google cited growing Internet use in Latin America, and said Chile has reliable infrastructure and a business-friendly environment"
Karma: Bad
The headline sounds as if Google was interested in the national language of the country rather than the geographical location, IT infrastracture, maintenance cost and other country (but not language!) dependent factors. One would think that Guyana or Suriname were also out of question because of this. Why not call it the first South American server instead since it is located, you know, in South America?
You must be thinking about a different planet.
FYI IBM just invested 30 million in a "Smarter DataCenter" in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico Link in spanish: http://www.informador.com.mx/economia/2012/402805/6/inaugura-ibm-smarter-data-center-en-guadalajara.htm
You should try Merken
"Chile is Roman Catholic, also not dependant at all on foreign aid.
We do have earthquakes, but most construction is resistant to it."
But why do they call it Latin-America when nobody speaks Latin?
Latin isn't dead; it's just got a handful of national varieties: French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, etc.
No, but voters do! Both candidates are vying for the Latin-American vote, so a Latin-American Data Center is a good political strategic move. They can sell Latin-American Data to both political parties! Listen to both of their speeches for signs of things that appeal to Latin-Americans' voters' likes in Google.
Additionally both candidates are after women voters. So the US Secret Service has taken a special interest in Latin-American women, just to be on the safe side.
I forgot, which candidates does Google own, again . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The headline doesn't suggest anything about why the location was selected. It simply reports a fact about the location that was selected.
Calling it the "first South American server" would be less accurate than calling it the "first Latin American data center", since while it is both in "Latin America" and in "South America", it is a data center, not, you know, a single server (and since the article doesn't indicate that its Google's first office in either Latin or South America, it quite likely doesn't involve Google's first server in either place.)
Latin America is bigger than (though not, as you note, a strict superset of) South America (including, as it does, virtually all of Central and South America), so its quite possible that the "Latin America" designation was chosen because its more significant, while still being shorter than "first data center in the Western Hemisphere outside of the United States", which would have also been accurate.
Don't worry, they will just hang onto the Cloud when the ground opens up beneath them.
> it is a data center, not, you know, a single server
The "server" is certainly a typo, as you should have guessed. Certain people like me have coherence problems expressing their thoughts and cannot live without an edit button.
> "Latin America" designation was chosen because its more significant
The whole issue is debatable, my personal opinion is that the main reason Google wants to have servers in South America is to improve the latency for people living there and take some load off international cables. Both of these goals cannot be achieved from Mexico or other Latin American countries not physically located in South America.
I was basing the comment on Google's published list of data center locations, which does not include Toronto, Dublin, or London.
Because they already have facilities in Sao Paulo, so this wouldn't be worthy of a press release if they said South America
Latin America is the proper name for all the former spanish and portuguese colonies. We have a shared language and 500 hundred years of shared history. A chilean from Rosario have more in common with a mexican from Tijuana than a catalonian from Barcelona with a spanish from Madrid. We are not a single country due the meddling of foreign powers and the short sightedness of most of our leadership since the XIX century. It makes sense that Googlee builds a datacenter tailored to the needs of the geopolitical, economic subcontinent.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Business friendliness doesn't mean anything if it results in less freedoms for regular individuals.
Now if they were to do datacenters in otherwise sane places not completely controlled by business - e.g. north of the Mason-Dixon, east of the Mississippi (exc. Indiana) and New England - there might be something of note in the news.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Google has not built a data center in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They use third-party facilities there.
I also found these:
http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/bogota/ops-support/data-center/
http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/buenos-aires/ops-support/data-center/
http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/lima/ops-support/data-center/
I don't why these misleading URLs exist. Maybe future Data Centers?
If you click on "Latin America (4)" you find only one entry: "Santiago (4)".