Facebook is said to be considering making an investment of T$10 billion ($300 million) to build its first data center in the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. firm has zeroed in on Taiwan, an official said on Wednesday. Google already has a data center in Taiwan. The social networking giant already has four data centers in the U.S. and one in Sweden.
No confirmation from Facebook
Wei Ming-ku, Magistrate of Changhua County in Central Taiwan, informed the media that six acres or 2.43 hectares of land will be needed for the data center, and it could expand to 20 acres in the future.
“We’ve made all-out efforts to ensure sufficient supply of water and electricity … We hope they will come,” the official said.
However, Facebook said it has not yet made any decision regarding this.
In an email to Reuters, a Facebook spokeswoman, said, “As a global company working to connect billions of people around the world, we are always evaluating potential sites for new data centers, but we don’t have anything to announce at this time.”
Changhua County is preferred by Google as well, and it has built a data center of its own there hoping to tap into the fast-growing Asian markets. Earlier this year, Google made an additional investment of NT$2.1 billion ($64.2 million) to expand and improve the facility. Singapore is another location in Asia where Google has a data center.
Facebook and Google data centers in Bozeman?
The Northern Rocky Mountain Economic Development District based in Bozeman also wishes to get a major tech company to go to southwestern Montana, and it thinks it is really close to getting that done. For the past two years, the district has been making continuous efforts to convince search giant Google and social media giant Facebook to build data centers in the Bozeman area.
In October, a delegation from the Bozeman-based non-profit traveled to Palo Alto to meet Google staff members. On the same day, a “mixer” with government officials was attended by representatives from Google and Facebook. And on Monday, the governor’s office revealed a non-disclosure agreement from Google, but not from Facebook, says a report from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
As of now, there is no information about if Google or Facebook has purchased any land in the area, but the Chronicle did inform readers that the governor’s policy adviser had met with a number of businesses, including Google or Facebook.
