Google has announced plans to invest more than $7bn on US offices and data centres this year, with $1bn to be spent in the San Francisco Bay area of California alone.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google and its parent company Alphabet, said there would be office developments in Atlanta, Washington, DC, Chicago and New York, and data centres in Nebraska, South Carolina, Virginia, Nevada and Texas.Â
"In 2020, Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and Google advertising tools helped provide $426bn of economic activity for more than 2 million American businesses, non-profits, publishers, creators and developers, according to our 2020 US Economic Impact Report, released today," Pichai said.
Google has more than 52,000 employees in California. It plans to hire 10,000 more workers in the US as a whole. In the past three years, Google invested nearly $30bn in offices and data centres.
Google’s graphic giving the location of its planned offices and data centres
Last month, Alphabet reported fourth-quarter revenue of $57bn, a 23% surge from the prior year as the pandemic forced ever more people online. Amazon, Apple and Facebook have also reported booming earnings.
Google plans to complete two office projects in Mountain View this year: the 55,300 sq m Charleston East project and the 100,000 sq m Bay View. Google also will start work on a campus in Sunnyvale, California, using mass timber construction to a design by Danish firm Bjarke Ingels Group.
This project, announced in 2018, will have two buildings covering 100,000 sq m accommodating up to 4,500 employees (see further reading).
Image: Bjarke Ingels Group’s rendering of its zig-zag Sunnyvale design (Courtesy BIG)
Further reading:
