Google to invest $1B in UK data centre

I didn't expect tech to significantly leave London unless it became a lot harder to hire foreigners in the UK, and as far as I know it hasn't - non-EU immigration has increased hugely since Brexit. Unlike e.g. food or manufactured goods, software and related services don't have tight regulatory borders and the services are generally sold globally, not into discrete markets.

Finance is deflating like a slow puncture. There's fewer listings in London[1]. Open positions[2] is another early indicator. I believe the US is generally a bigger beneficiary than any EU competitor city. There is no emerging EU alternative to London, instead other cities are consolidating in specific verticals. It's a bit tricky to split out finance industry trends from the broader economy of course.

[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/business/peel-hunt-london-listing...

[2] https://www.efinancialcareers.ch/en/news/2024/01/brexit-bank...

The problem with debating anything to do with Brexit is the promises that were made to win the vote were, by and large, total lies. There was an argument that we didn't have control of immigration because of the freedom of movement, a big part of that was an insistence that the immigration rate was unsustainable. Post brexit immigration has massively increased. So sure, the predictions about all the negative effects of clamping down on immigration were wrong. But that's because we didn't.

Similarly, the arguments about companies leaving the UK were based on the premise that UK regulation would diverge from EU regulation. But it hasn't.

In a few cases where real regulatory hurdles exist the UK has lost out. I worked for a company that started up an Amsterdam office directly because they needed to be within the EU, and that has genuinely drawn talent away from the UK to the EU. B

So far I think the biggest impact of Brexit has actually been state sector not private - suddenly the UK had to replicate the entirity of EU shared beauracracy. So now for example, we have to independently evaluate all drug approvals in what is basically a pointless waste of time replicating something the EU already did.

Google has many datacenters in Europe and I'm actually surprised they don't have one in UK yet.

Take a look: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/

Brexit or not, these things are sensitive to distance and infrastructure availability. There are certain hotspots, for example Egypt is one. Maybe the next one will be in Cairo, Istanbul or Sofia.

> But I do wonder why UK.

eh? because there are lots of customers there, including rich businesses who want to pay for cloud hosting in the UK legal jurisdiction with low latency.

Google already has datacentres in neighbouring countries - Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, etc - and already has a cloud region in the UK so it's not very surprising to do some infill.

One: London has an exceptionally high density of connectivity, with fast, low-latency connections across most of the western hemisphere. It's easy to recruit a lot of good technical staff at comparatively low cost. Power isn't particularly cheap, but it's relatively low-carbon and is moving quickly towards net-zero.

Two: The British government is desperate to cultivate the appearance of a thriving high-tech, high-growth economy and is willing to offer very generous terms for inbound investment. The current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fancies himself as something of a tech bro and is eager to grow the British tech sector, even if that involves a lot of flexibility on things like tax and regulatory compliance. A large faction within the governing Conservative Party are keen to reposition the UK along the lines of Singapore or Hong Kong, acting as a low-tax, low-regulation bridge between larger international markets; there's a lot of movement in that direction that isn't particularly transparent.

Ireland used to be the benchmark in that respect, but it has become a more difficult environment due to persistent intervention by the EU and domestic discontent. Britain's post-brexit position as EU-adjacent imposes a lot of costs on SMEs, but it's attractive if you have the legal and lobbying resources to creatively navigate the ambiguity and uncertainty of that position.

If you look into the job market a lot have moved to the Netherlands. The UK is gradually becoming irrelevant. A 1 bil $ investment is negligible in the grand scheme of things. If you spoke with people in finance then you’ll learn things are bad. Really bad.

I feel like your post is a strawman. First, tons of especially finance jobs have left the UK. I don't think anyone ever thought "all" the jobs, or even a majority of them, would leave, especially when it's obvious huge banks can't just pack up overnight (or even in many years), but there is an undeniable deflation of finance activity. One reference: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/29/brexit-fina...

And I never read anything that had people predicting tech would leave en mass. It generally seems like a mixed bag, with tech being relatively strong, but especially not reaping anywhere near the original promised benefits of Brexiteers: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/02/01/brexit-3-years-on-t...

Ah. But that is expecting action from a reigning government that has proven itself unable to do literally anything forward-thinking. It’s regression all over.

Generally, a project like this would require multiple grid connections, which they would pay for.