How Google's vast data centre in Mons is boosting the local economy

In June last year, Google opened a second data centre facility at its site in Saint-Ghislain, near Mons. The original site became operational in September 2010 after an investment of €250 million, and for this expansion, Google has invested another €300 million.

In all, Google has 13 data centres around the world, of which three are in Europe. They house high-tech computer system technology that stores data, and could be considered gigantic hard drives. The data stored in Wallonia is used to run services like Google’s search engine, its email service Gmail, video site YouTube and Google Maps. These programmes take data from servers and transmit them to users.

As more and more data is moving around the world, Google needs increasing capacity. Freddy Bonhomme, hardware operations manager of Google Belgium, explained why Google has to keep expanding the scope of its data centres. “When we opened our first data centre around the turn of the millennium, YouTube didn’t exist and Gmail was only starting up,” he said. “But now everybody has a personal computer in their pocket, in the form of a smartphone, and about 300 hours of video material are uploaded to YouTube every minute.” According to Bonhomme, 100 billion queries a month are carried out via Google’s search engine.

The federal minister of the digital agenda, Alexander De Croo, stresses that this trend is only gaining force. “The volume of data created in the digital world will multiply tenfold by 2020,” he said in a statement. “This technological revolution is changing the way of working in different sectors, not only in informatics but also in industry, healthcare and transport.”

At the opening, the economic consultancy bureau Copenhagen Economics presented a report on the impact of Google’s investments in the region of Mons. The researchers concluded that the investments led to an impact of about €110 million a year for the Belgian economy. Most of this comes from the construction and operations of the centre, but also from money spent by Google staff and subcontractors in the local economy. In total, Google has contributed about €900 million to the Belgian economy since the data centre opened, according to Copenhagen Economics.

The centre currently employs 300 people, from electro-technicians to catering staff. About half the staff come from the region around Mons and are in low-skilled positions. But the study states that Google has indirectly helped 1,200 more people a year to have a job.

“Investments like these are very important, because they don’t just create jobs themselves but also attract other investments in the region,” said De Croo. “With a strong digital agenda for Belgium, I want to ensure that we further strengthen our attractiveness for investors.” He added that the internet economy would be one of the strongest drivers for the economy and welfare in the coming years, so Belgium should embrace all new digital opportunities.

On its website, Google explains why it has chosen Saint-Ghislain as an important base. “Saint-Ghislain has the right combination of energy infrastructure and developable land,” it says. “The local authorities also have a strong vision of how the internet can bring economic benefits and jobs to the area.”

Google also mentions the Digital Innovation Valley project in Mons, which “has created a cluster of high-tech businesses and put technology at the heart of the education system. As a result, we had a great team of people supporting investment in the area, who were very helpful during our site selection process.”

The love between Google and the Walloon authorities is mutual. Mons mayor and former Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo said the arrival of Google in the region had played an important role in the conversion of Mons from an industrial area to a digital technology zone. “Mons is now a centre of excellence, where the successes of tomorrow in new technology are being developed,” he said.

Saint-Ghislain mayor Daniel Olivier was equally pleased. “Google is a prestigious name that can attract other investors to the region and which has a large impact on the local job market,” he said. “I hope this will motivate youngsters to study informatics and high-tech technologies in the region, with a guarantee of finding a job afterwards.”

On its website, Google highlights that it wants to have a positive influence on the local community through support for cultural and educational initiatives. For example, the company has signed a partnership with the Mundaneum museum in Mons, which reopened last summer and was one of the flagships of Mons’ programme during its stint as European Capital of Culture. The Mundaneum archive was established in 1910 by two Belgian lawyers who aimed to gather and index all the world’s knowledge, and is seen as the predecessor of Google. “We will be engaging in other local partnerships over the coming months and years,” Google said.

Olivier thanked Google for its support for cultural projects. “We can now permanently show 2D images of the Abbey of Saint-Ghislain during the Middle Ages (in our Musée de la Mémoire),” he said.

To fulfil its goal of hiring staff locally, Google is working with secondary schools, universities and colleges, helping them to develop their technology programmes. “In doing so, we hope to assist the members of the community who are just entering the job market, retraining or progressing on their career paths,” the company said. “We want to help invigorate participation and opportunity in technology, increase knowledge in the community and benefit potential employers in the area in the future.”

Google also awards community grants, from €4,500 to €45,000, for non-profit and certain public organisations, to support educational, social, cultural, technological and ecological initiatives. The data centre in Saint-Ghislain is a good example of Google’s ecological aspirations. It was the first Google data centre worldwide to run entirely without refrigeration, using instead an advanced evaporative cooling system that draws grey water from a nearby industrial canal. This helps to keep the computers running at their highest efficiency and reduces the overall energy use.

The company has plans to further expand the data centre in the near future with a third facility, and the site at Saint-Ghislain is large enough to make this possible.

This article first appeared in WAB magazine