Search engine giant Google Inc. plans to spend $600 million to build a data center in North Carolina, The so-called "server farm" will eventually employ 210 people in a region hit hard in recent years by layoffs in the furniture and textile industries.

The state will give the company $4.8 million as part of a total incentives package that could reach more than $100 million. Google plans to build the center in Lenoir, a city of 60,000 about 60 miles northwest of Charlotte. The average annual salary at the data center is expected to be $48,300, about $20,000 more than the average salary in Caldwell County.

The recruitment of Google is the second high-tech score for the state's economic developers since 2004, when both the state and local governments gave Dell Inc. $280 million worth of incentives to build a computer plant in Winston-Salem. The Dell plant opened in October 2005."

Construction of the new data centre in Council Bluffs [Iowa] has started and Google plans to start operations by spring of 2009, Iowa Governor Chet Culver announced in a news release. Google said the region is a busy crossroads of Internet activity.

The western Iowa facility, which sits on nearly 4.8 square kilometres of land, with room for expansion, will employ about 200 workers whose responsibility will be to keep the facility running 24 hours a day. Google declined to offer specific details about its network of data centres, but said it has "dozens" of facilities around the world, including recently announced projects in Oklahoma, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Google and other Web heavyweights like Microsoft Corp. are capitalising on the declining cost of computing power and data storage to build enormous data centers in areas with cheap electricity. These companies see data centres as a competitive way to differentiate from smaller Internet service providers that can't afford to make the heavy up-front investments in infrastructure.

MidAmerican Energy Co., which will supply the electricity to the facility, would not say how much electricity the data centre will consume, citing a confidentiality agreement with Google. The energy company recently completed the expansion of its coal-fired plant in Council Bluffs, which can produce over 1,300 megawatts.

It's pretty common for large companies to get tax breaks and other incentives to expand their operations in U.S. cities and states. Apparently, things aren't going so well for Google in North Carolina though.

First, there was the charge that the search giant tried to silence North Carolina politicians as the parties negotiated the deal. Under the agreement, Google will invest around $600 million and employ more than 200 people in a data center in Lenoir in exchange for tax breaks worth at least $89 million over 30 years. Now, a libertarian advocacy group is challenging those incentives and suing Google.

The organization says a state law designed to give Google tax exemptions, as well as a $4.8 million state Job Development Investment Grant given to the Web giant, violate various provisions of the state Constitution, according to the Triangle Business Journal.

The plaintiff previously sued to block more than $200 million in incentives to lure Dell to Winston-Salem, but the case was dismissed and the ruling has been appealed, the report said.

San Francisco experienced a power outage yesterday that caused the 365 Main data center to go down. DataCenter Knowledge has all the details about why the backup generators failed.

This is why Google and Microsoft are building massive data centers costing $500 million each all over the country. There are only a few companies in the world that have the financial resources to build multiple data centers, and that have the technical skills to keep them running efficiently.

Software is increasingly moving towards hosted services. Microsoft is working hard to deliver "Software + Services" to give users the best of both worlds. Keeping data synchronized on clients and servers, and delivering a great user experience while on-line and off, is a big challenge.

Microsoft is planning a new $550 million data center in San Antonio, Texas. This is in addition to the $500M data center being built in Quincy, Washington.

Google has already started building a giant data center in The Dalles, Oregon. Another is planned for Blythewood, South Carolina on 466 acres. The project is expected to cost up to $800M and employ 600 people.

The keys to where these data centers are being built? Cheap power and cheap land. Listen to this quote from MySA.com "