Ask.com Plans Washington St. Data Center

Search engine Ask.com has signed a lease for a data center in an existing building in Moses Lake, Washington, according to John Cook of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who said the company declined to name the building or specify the size of the data center.

Ask.com's decision continues the data center building boom in central Washington State, where four other major projects are already underway. Microsoft has announced plans for a huge data center complex in Quincy, as has Intuit. Meanwhile, Yahoo and Sabey Corp. are starting projects in nearby Wenatchee.

Cook notes that although Ask.com didn't disclose the exact location of its site, one obvious possibility in Moses lake would be the Titan building, a former NORAD Missile Control Center that's been converted to data center use.

Central Washington has become a favored destination for data centers due to its plentiful supply of hydro power from dams on the Columbia River. The projects by Yahoo, Microsoft and Sabey are all huge facilities that will likely be filled with high-density computing installations featuring thousands of servers, requiring enormous amounts of power.