Google's coming!

[Bull City Rising]

Originally Posted by Carolina_native

I dont see how it can be assumed that google wont bring any additional employers and business to the area. I would like to think that those who brought the company to Lenoir would have some belief that this is a good thing for the area. Think about it, why give all those breaks to a rich company for only 200 jobs? Because local and state leaders believe it will be a huge benefit to the area. It wouldnt surprise me to hear other companies coming to that area this year.

NC has a share the wealth problem. While some parts of the state grow, others lose out. And its the same places time and again.

Look, at heart, here's the issue:

Governments pay incentives to lure companies to an area if they think that they are a desirable area for that certain business, so bringing in Company X will help win Companies Y, Z and Q down the road.

Only problem is, the factors that make Lenoir attractive for a data center is that it has cheap land and cheap utilities. Period, end of story. There will be a bump for retail and residential business in the town, but just a bump. Locals aren't going to get these jobs in most cases. And this incentive helps to set no "precedent" for other businesses to set up. The massive capital investment required for a data center means that this Google facility won't spur new start-ups around it, or help draw companies that need to be near it (Google doesn't *have* any "suppliers" for their data centers, other than getting electricity in!)

Every state has areas that grow and areas that lag behind. Tampa is a more attractive place to be, career-wise, than Fla.'s Big Bend region. You do better in San Francisco than Fresno. Let's face it, the areas that INVEST tax dollars in quality local education and in higher education are more attractive places for business these days. If anything, when you look at areas like road construction, N.C. dramatically overfunds rural areas at the expense of the urban areas. If you want the peaceful life out in the country, it's a great place to live, but you shouldn't expect to find terrific professional and IT jobs there.

I find the example of Durham, my adopted city, instructive. Durham was a one-horse boom town -- tobacco. There was no other industry here (sound familiar to the furniture-producing areas?) In the early-20th century, the industrialists who built their millions in Durham were forward-thinking enough to realize that they needed to bring in universities. So, they relocated the struggling Trinity College from elsewhere in N.C. and, a generation later, one of the industrialists gave the funding that turned this college into Duke University. RTP followed another generation later, thanks to the presence of Duke and UNC/NCSU, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, the towns that decided to stick with one industry (furniture manufacturing) are in a tougher spot today.

[Miker2069]

Originally Posted by Bull City Rising

Look, at heart, here's the issue:

Governments pay incentives to lure companies to an area if they think that they are a desirable area for that certain business, so bringing in Company X will help win Companies Y, Z and Q down the road.

Only problem is, the factors that make Lenoir attractive for a data center is that it has cheap land and cheap utilities. Period, end of story. There will be a bump for retail and residential business in the town, but just a bump. Locals aren't going to get these jobs in most cases. And this incentive helps to set no "precedent" for other businesses to set up. The massive capital investment required for a data center means that this Google facility won't spur new start-ups around it, or help draw companies that need to be near it (Google doesn't *have* any "suppliers" for their data centers, other than getting electricity in!)

Every state has areas that grow and areas that lag behind. Tampa is a more attractive place to be, career-wise, than Fla.'s Big Bend region. You do better in San Francisco than Fresno. Let's face it, the areas that INVEST tax dollars in quality local education and in higher education are more attractive places for business these days. If anything, when you look at areas like road construction, N.C. dramatically overfunds rural areas at the expense of the urban areas. If you want the peaceful life out in the country, it's a great place to live, but you shouldn't expect to find terrific professional and IT jobs there.

I find the example of Durham, my adopted city, instructive. Durham was a one-horse boom town -- tobacco. There was no other industry here (sound familiar to the furniture-producing areas?) In the early-20th century, the industrialists who built their millions in Durham were forward-thinking enough to realize that they needed to bring in universities. So, they relocated the struggling Trinity College from elsewhere in N.C. and, a generation later, one of the industrialists gave the funding that turned this college into Duke University. RTP followed another generation later, thanks to the presence of Duke and UNC/NCSU, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, the towns that decided to stick with one industry (furniture manufacturing) are in a tougher spot today.

Interesting where this thread is going- I agree with BCR for the most part, the google deal is a real-estate play. Overall Google will be good for area, it will bring some jobs, and it will have a positive effect. However it won't be the same type of effect, say, if Honda decided to open an auto plant, or Pepsi opened a bottling plant- in which human beings are needed in large scale to run manufacturing creating hundreds or thousands of jobs.

There will be jobs for security, administrative, some technical (i.e., physical networking, wiring/cabling, and monitoring) on site- probably the 200 jobs referenced in the article. There will be jobs around infrastructure maintenance (grounds, security, etc.), however most likely those will be contracted out to local state companies (so yes, there will be some trickle down effect-a good thing).

I haven't read much about the "why" a data center here in NC, but probably has to do with needing a North America-East coast server farm for speeds, etc. etc.

Who knows it could very well turn out that it starts something like IBM, Network Appliance, Red Hat, etc. did in RTP (yeah I know the universities are close by) but Lenior is within 3 hours from most of those schools too...

[silverwing]

Originally Posted by Miker2069

I haven't read much about the "why" a data center here in NC, but probably has to do with needing a North America-East coast server farm for speeds, etc. etc.

I'd have to go back and search for the news article; one factor was the cost of power. It's cheaper in NC (the comparison was made to California) and the Lenoir area already has a stable, high output grid, once meant to support the furniture factories. A server farm requires a great deal of power to operate the machines, but a massive amount of power is required to COOL the things. I've been in a room where there were only about 25 servers when the chiller failed. That room GOT HOT! And once a server overheats, it dies.

This is primarily a server farm which, from my experience, won't need a large staff of IT people. A lot of troubleshooting can be done from off-site, even out-of-state. The servers where I work (I think we're up to ...about 300) are automated to send out an alert if the interface breaks or they hang. The operators in the data center (all TWO of us, who perform about 200 other tasks besides monitoring the server map) also see the alert, but our job is to make sure someone calls in to check on the problem. The LAN person can dial in from practically anywhere to diagnose the issue. A worst case scenario is them telling us to go out and boot the thing, or hook it up to the crash cart for more in-depth diagnosis. I've seen very few instances where the LAN person has to actually come in and work on the server. Those folks are around during the day for maintenance and upgrades.

I checked the Google site; it appears they are already scouting for people. Here's one of the job postings
http://www.google.com/support/jobs/b...y?answer=58742

OK .. doing a search on the Google/NC connection, I came across this very informative article
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/16471226.htm

I-YI-YI -- talking about a state mortgaging the farm

[Miker2069]

$100 million over 30 years really isn't a whole lot and since the states isn't necessarily coming up with this money out of pocket, and it's in the form of a tax break, it's not to bad. Honestly though if google actually exists beyond 10 years I will be surprised. It'll merge, be acquired, sliced/diced way before that 30 year period.

[mk1116]

I find this interesting as they are building their headquarters in Ann Arbor, MI where they are from.

[Bull City Rising]

Originally Posted by mk1116

I find this interesting as they are building their headquarters in Ann Arbor, MI where they are from.

It's not going to be their HQ. Looks like it will be a digitization (book scanning) location for the Google Books project, plus a support operation for their AdWords web advertising group.

Google recruits very heavily out of top US universities, which is why they're clustered around the places like San Fran., Boston, NYC, and now Ann Arbor where the top students go.

Interestingly... Michigan only gave $38 million in tax credits over 20 years (much less than in NC)... to create 1,000 jobs (much more than in NC!) This makes the NC deal look even sillier.

[silverwing]

The latest on the Google project
http://journalnow.com/servlet/Satell...=1149193315388

LENOIR

The Google Inc. data center planned for Caldwell County won't be more than an isolated building filled with computers and won't produce spinoff jobs that officials have touted, according to economic development experts.

Even Google says the center probably won't spin off new local industries.

[copyrighted article cut - do not repost full articles!]