It became official a couple days ago: Google has chosen Iowa as a site for a data center, dashing the hopes of us Minnesotans for the Big Guys to come to our state. Oh, the pain of it all! Losing again to the Hawkeyes…. My heart sank when I saw the news on CNet. Another story had appeared earlier, I learned, from my old buddies at Byte & Switch.
This news was especially painful in light of the post I did a while back, called Minne-GOOG?, in which I related a case that had been made by a fellow Minnesota blogger about why Google should buy the St. Paul Ford plant, which had just announced it was closing.
For a little perspective on this revolting development for Gopher fans, I asked Matt Bauer, the founder of Mosquito Mole Multiworks in Minneapolis, for some background on how such a thing could happen. MMMultiworks specializes in Rails development and hosting for startups. Matt’s a smart guy, and we were just talking about this very subject at lunch the week before this news broke.
“Google’s choice not to build a datacenter in Minnesota doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me,” he said. “This state doesn’t have cheap fiber connections — we’re just a spur off of Chicago for the most part. With its dark-fiber reserves, Google could probably overcome this, but they can’t overcome Minnesota’s energy problem.” He thus hit on the what would appear to be the real reason Google shunned the Gopher state.
“The biggest difficulty in building a datacenter is power — period,” Bauer continued. “That’s why Google buys more land than it needs for its data centers — so no one else can build nearby and take power. Minnesota has a good amount of power, but legislation put into law this February probably likely took Minnesota out of the running.” That legislation requires 25% of the state’s energy to come from next generation power sources. “I’m sure Google saw this and quickly became concerned about the quality of these new power sources and the associated costs. Iowa doesn’t have such legislation and gets its electricity from MidAmerican Energy, which hasn’t raised its prices since 1995. In fact, they’ve promised not to raise prices until 2010! Additionally, their new coal-fueled power plants operate very efficiently and predictably,” said Bauer.
Then there was the take of Ed Kohler, master blogger over at Minnesota’s own Technology Evangelist — the source of that great post I referred to above. He said, “Maybe it’s just there to speed up Warren Buffet’s searches?” Old-Mr.-Money-Bags Buffet lives just across the river from Council Bluffs in Omaha, Nebraska.
Nice write-up, Graeme. I’d rather see a sales or developer office over a data center, given a choice. Both would support more high paying jobs than the people it takes to keep a bunch of servers spinning.
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maybe Google bought up all that land so they could plunk down a windmill farm as well…
Northern Iowa is a haven for windmills because of reliably strong winds… primarily because it sucks so much.
Bex, that is too good….LOL!!
I see that Google is building another large plant just a few miles from the one they just finished. (warehouses or server farm I guess.) They are taking some of our most productive farm ground out of production, and hauling truck loads of fill dirt from the “Loess hills” This new place is within view of the(coal)power plant, soybean processing facility, and a new e-85 plant under construction. Seems smarter to grow corn on that land and truck it 1/4 mile to the ethanol plant. Take off your green colored glasses Google. You’re just another big Corp. making the most money you can. That’s OK with me , but just tell it like it is and quit playing the “save the planet game”
Not very green Google.