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Google agrees to N.C. site but still ogling Goose Creek
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Wither Google? A company spokesman suggested it may be some time before there’s a definitive word on whether it will establish a data center in the Lowcountry.
“We’re continuing to evaluate a number of additional sites around the world, including the one we’ve confirmed in Goose Creek,” said Google’s Barry Schnitt in a recent e-mail to the Charleston Regional Business Journal. “We hope to have more information to share in the coming months.”
After months of secrecy, Google in mid-January confirmed its intention to build a huge server farm in Lenoir, N.C., but was quick to assert that the announcement by no means meant South Carolina was out of the running for an additional facility.
But if Google remains coy on its South Carolina intentions, PBS technology columnist Robert X. Cringley was pulling no such punches.
Cringley, which is the pseudonym of Charleston-based technology writer Mark Stephens, has reported that Google is planning to build at both the 520-acre site it bought in Goose Creek and another 466-acre site in Blythewood for which it is reportedly still negotiating.
Those sites and the Lenoir facility will be joined by at least two more facilities in the Southeast, one an additional North Carolina site and the other just across the state line in Georgia, Cringely said.
Reports published in The State newspaper suggest the South Carolina investment alone could range from $1.55 billion to perhaps as much as $2.15 billion, depending on the final cost of the Blythewood site.
Cringley believes the company’s activity here is merely the local manifestation of a phenomena occurring all over the country. The columnist, who has been writing about the tech industry since there has been one, told the Business Journal that he believes Google is intent on getting into the telephone and cable television business and is locating server farms to support such an enterprise.
“They’re doing it in every state” he said.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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