Google Is Set To Spend $7 Billion In Data Centers And Office Space This Year

Google is set to spend $7 billion in the creation of new office spaces and data centers in 2021. The company intends to do this in 19 states including Texas, South Carolina, and Minnesota, reaching areas that are new to Google.

The tech giant intends to spend $1 billion on completing the new campus in Silicon Valley which has been under construction for years now. According to the proposal submitted in August 2020, the campus spans across 40 acres and includes amenities like pools, parks, and restaurants. There will be close to 2,000 residential units, 20% of which will be affordable. This is in line with the pledge the tech company made in 2020 to create 15,000 homes meant for middle- and lower-income families.

The company's CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the company's plans in a blog post released on Thursday. Unlike other tech companies like Twitter and Facebook, which have given workers the option of working, from home permanently, Google admits that it won't go that route as in-person collaboration and communication is integral to the company's culture and future. 

With more than 135,000 employees already, Pichai also disclosed that in their endeavor to create a more racially diverse workforce, Google will be engaging 10,000 new employees across the United States with at least 10 percent in the states of Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and Washington - all of which have a high population of Black workers.

In Google, just like other big tech companies in Silicon Valley, representation of black employees is disproportionately low, with black employees making up less than 4% of the overall company's workforce. The company has made tiny progress in the past years, with the percentage growing from 2.4% in 2014 to 3.7% in 2020.

Last year, Google promised to employ more people from underrepresented groups in leadership positions, aiming for at least 30% by the year 2025. 

The expansion of data centers comes from the company's interest in expanding its cloud business. It already has 21 data centers around the world, with at least 12 in the United States. These centers are equipped with computers that process and store large amounts of information. They keep all of Google's services running all the time.

Having more data centers also allows more companies to rent server space from them. 

The company lost about $5.6 billion in revenue in its cloud operations last year, and Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian is currently focused on growing and making profits in that area.

As coronavirus vaccines start rolling out and more people get vaccinated, Google expects workers to physically appear in offices on assigned days, as it plans to adopt a hybrid structure where employees work remotely only on some days.

Google's services contributed about $426 billion of economic activity last year, and the company intends to keep investing in the U.S. economy.

The company concluded 2020 with a 23% increase in revenue from 2019, bringing the final amount to a mind-blowing sum of $56.9 billion.