02 Oct U.S. Tech Giants Are Investing Billions to Keep Data in Europe
In the battle to dominate Europe’s cloud computing market, American tech giants are spending big to build up their local credibility.
Amazon Web Services, the largest player, announced last week that it would soon open multiple data centers in France and Britain. Google, which already has sites in countries like Finland and Belgium, is expected to finish a new multimillion-dollar data complex in the Netherlands by the end of the year.
And Microsoft, by some measures the second-largest cloud computing provider in Europe, said on Monday that it had spent $1 billion in the last 12 months to expand its offerings, taking its total investment in European-based cloud services to $3 billion since 2005.
“We’re building our global cloud infrastructure in Europe so it can be trusted by the multiple constituents,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said in an interview. “We can meet the data residency needs of our European customers.”