Google unveils new data centres in Asia to manage growth on continent

Google opens data centres in Taiwan and Singapore growth in internet users in Asia booms

Google has opened data centres in Taiwan and Singapore, two years after it first announced plans to keep up with the growth of internet users in Asia.

"While we've been busy building, the growth of Asia's internet has been amazing," Google's vice president of data centres, Joe Kava said in a blogpost.

"The number of internet users in India has doubled from 100 million to 200 million. It took six years to achieve that milestone in the US. Between July and September of this year alone, more than 60 million people in Asia landed on the mobile internet for the first time - that's almost two Canadas, or three Australias," he added.

Kava said that the growth in Asia will continue as the majority of people that have yet to come online also live in Asia.

On its new data centres in Taiwan and Singapore opening, Kava said "thank goodness they are open".

The larger of the two data centres will be located in Chunghua County, Taiwan. It sits on 15 hectares of land, and Google's long-term investment for the facility will reach $600m (£365m).

Kava claimed that Google built this to be "one of Asia's most efficient and environmentally friendly data centres". It will use a night time cooling and thermal energy storage system to increase efficiency.

"The system works by cooling water at night, when temperatures are cooler, storing the cooled water in large insulated tanks where it retains its temperature before being pumped throughout the facility to cool our servers during the day," Kava said.

Singapore's data centre is on a smaller scale, which Kava said was Google's first "urban, multi-story data centre". It's based next to a local primary school and several publicly run houses.