Google To Open $300 Million Hong Kong Data Center

Google (GOOG) said on Thursday that it is spending $300 million on a data center in Hong Kong. This will be Google's first company-built data center in the Asia-Pacific region.

In late September of this year Google announced a major expansion of its infrastructure in Asia with an investment of $100 million to build new data centers in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The announcement for the Hong Kong data center came as Google held a groundbreaking ceremony for the 2.7 hectare site of the planned facility. The $300 million investment encompasses land, construction and technical equipment. It will be located in the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in Kowloon. Google expects to hire 25 full-time staff.

Despite the political challenges in Southeast Asia, Google says it is seeing significant growth and locating these data centers in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong is an important next stage for the company's investment in the region.

"We're working as quickly as we can to get this facility operational so we can keep up with rapid growth in capacity demand across the region," said Simon Chang, head of Google's hardware operations in Asia. "Currently, we are targeting early 2013 to start bringing the facility online."

Google has been developing plans and scouting locaitons for building data centers in Asia for some time now, as it has been talking with various government officials and buying undersea cable infrastructure.