No Data Center in Korea
Google will open a data center in Japan next year. It is the first time since 2013 that Google builds a new data center in Asia.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced his visit to Japan on his blog on Oct. 6 (local time), saying that the company will open its first data center in Japan in Chiba Prefecture in 2023. Google previously said that it would invest US$730 million (about 1.4 trillion won) by next year to expand Google’s Japanese infrastructure. The data center is part of this plan.
Japan will become the third Asian country to have a Google data center, after Taiwan and Singapore. During his visit to Japan, Pichai met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to explain his investment plan.
Google’s main services in Korea, such as Play Store, YouTube, and Gmail, are all provided through overseas servers. It uses a leased LG U+ data center to provide cloud services. Google has been criticized for not setting up a data center in Korea to avoid huge taxes from the Korean government. Google is estimated to generate trillions of won in sales in Korea, but only pays less than 10 billion won in corporate tax because it does not have a fixed place of business such as a data center in Korea.