Report: Google Mulls Another Oregon Data Center Build

While its Android developer team is busy patching up the Stagefright vulnerability, made public yesterday, Google’s infrastructure team continues working to make sure the company never runs out of data center capacity to support its products and services, including those around its mobile OS.

The company has secured 23 acres of land for potentially more construction near the already massive existing Google data center campus in The Dalles, Oregon. Google is exploring the possibility of building a new data center on the land at the Port of The Dalles, according to a report by OregonLive published Monday evening.

Like other internet and cloud services giants, Google never stops expanding data center capacity. The most recent Google data center expansion projects include construction on the site of a shuttered coal power plant in Alabama, a $300-million build in the Atlanta metro, a $380-million data center in Singapore, and a $66-million project in Taiwan.

Google’s Oregon plans at the moment seem vague. Darcy Nothnagle, the company’s head of external affairs for the western region, told the news service the team was “excited about exploring the possibility of expanding our operations.”

The Google data center in the city is the first the company designed and built for itself in 2006, when it switched from leasing data center space to building its own. It invested $1.2 billion in the first facility there, and this April formally launched a second one, estimated to have cost about $600 million.

The company enjoys state and local support for its construction projects there in the form of tax breaks. If it comes to fruition, the project at the port will be exempt from local property taxes, according to OregonLive.

But those tax breaks aren’t free. If Google decides to build another data center, it will have to pay $1.7 million to the city and county initially, and then $1 million more per year.

Google has a standing tax agreement with local authorities to pay $1.2 million in 2013 plus $800,000 per year starting in 2016. The money goes to the city, the county, and the county school district.