Google to Spend Over $200 million on Three New Data Centers in Asia

Google is working on building three data centers in Asia and is investing more than $200 million to improve internet access and connection speed in the region according to a report today by Dow Jones. The data centers are expected to be operational within 12 to 24 months.

The internet giant has earmarked locations in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan and has purchased lands in each country, according to a statement by the company. Currently Google has data centers in the US and Europe.

Akamai's state of the internet report in July discovered that Asia actually leads the world in Internet speeds with Japan, Korea and Hong Kong registering 67 out of 100 cities with the fastest connections in the world. However, nothing was said of South and Southeast Asian countries where mobile connectivity dominates over landline connections.

While the top ten countries in Asia and Middle East enjoy average speeds exceeding 3 Mbit/s, the next ten countries average less than 2 Mbit/s, and the next twenty averages 650 kbit/s according to the latest results from speedtest.net with Asia's regional average download speed clocking at 1.14 Mbit/s.

"The number of users and the amount of Internet use in Asia is growing faster than anywhere else in the world. We're seeing massive numbers of new users come online. We want to better serve them," Taj Meadows, Asia policy communications manager, said.

Mike Orgill, Google's government relations officer for Southeast Asia said to DailySocial recently that at the moment, Google is aiming to increase the number of internet users in Indonesia and one of the ways to do that is by promoting Google Chrome through television advertisements and other more traditional media.

The recently launched Chrome campaign which highlights humanitarian and environmental causes such as Blood for Life and Indonesia Berkebun, is aimed at educating people about the possibilities that can be achieved through the use of internet.

While there may be around 40 million internet users in Indonesia, only a small portion are familiar with email, blogging, e-commerce, and even less are familiar with online collaboration. The majority are still limited to using social networks and many don't realize that social networks are part of the internet.

At Social Media Festival last week, Andrew McGlinchey, Google's head of product management for Southeast Asia confirmed that the Chrome campaign is the first in Google's effort in Indonesia to improve people's awareness of the internet and to get them to explore more possibilities using online tools and services beyond simply connecting through social networks.

The kerfuffle over Research in Motion and its supposed lack of compliance with the Indonesian government's demands for local data centers and its access thereto surely had waved a strong warning flag in front of other internet-oriented company which heavily relies on cloud data processing.

With the recent news about Google's intention to open a local office and speculation over the government's expectation for Google to open a local data center, it would be a surprise if there is no reaction by the Indonesian media as well as the government to this latest development. Having already mapped three data centers in the region, there doesn't seem to be any technical reason or need for Google to invest in another one in Indonesia for the time being.