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Google’s appetite for real estate is growing. The tech giant’s CEO announced this week that the company is building new data centers and offices and plans to expand to several key locations across the country this year. It plans to spend $13 billion this year in real estate.
“With this new investment, Google will now have a home in 24 total states, including data centers in 13 communities,” wrote Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, in a blog post. “2019 marks the second year in a row we’ll be growing faster outside of the Bay Area than in it.”
Google announced that new data centers will be opened in 2019 in Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Nebraska, Google’s first presence in those states. Google also announced it would be doubling its workforce in Virginia as well as expanding its New York campus at Hudson Square.
Pichai says the expansion plans will likely create “tens of thousands” of construction jobs across Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia as well as in Oklahoma and South Carolina, where the company already has existing data centers.
The company will also be building new office buildings in Texas and Massachusetts and adding more space in Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington state, and Georgia, as well as redeveloping a location near Los Angeles and in the Bay Area in California.
The company’s investment plans in real estate this year follow $9 billion in real estate investments in 2018. That included $2.5 billion it spent on opening or expanding its data centers in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia, and Oklahoma.
Source: “Investing Across the U.S. in 2019,” Google (Feb. 13, 2019); “Google Will Spend $13 Billion on U.S. Real Estate in 2019, Expanding to Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Nebraska,” CNBC (Feb. 13, 2019); and “Google to Invest $13B in Real Estate Across the U.S.,” The Real Deal (Feb. 13, 2019)