Idk why it's hard to believe another company would try to outbid.
Discovering good locations for data centers is genuinely a difficult problem. They're relatively scarce. Bidding wars seem completely plausible.
Discovering good locations for data centers is genuinely a difficult problem. They're relatively scarce. Bidding wars seem completely plausible.
Still, if the prospecting is the bottleneck there could be 3rd parties (or even the tech companies themselves) entering into agreements with towns which allow both a finders fee and open bidding for the lot.