Apple to build huge €850m 'data centre' in Ireland's fields of Athenry | Hacker News Reader

Apple to build huge €850m 'data centre' in Ireland's fields of Athenry

belfasttelegraph.co.uk

42 pointsBTrapunzel49 comments

Both Ireland and Denmark are notoriously "tax efficient" options in Europe. You can't really blame corporations themselves for seeking the best deal for themselves, their customers, and let's not forget the shareholders.

However the system that brings this about is of course to blame, the same system that brings sweatshops and environmental ravage; feral market capitalism.

Although it's a system that does indeed increase the overall size of the pie, it must be properly stewarded and milked (via anti-trust laws, taxation, etc, etc) to ensure that the capital owners don't run away with the whole thing leaving just crumbs for everyone else.

Unfortunately as you can see, the international environment is not ideal for providing the consistent measures really required, and companies will slip through the cracks to find the best deals for themselves, often much better than if they were under any single tax regime.

As a Dane this is the first time I've heard "Denmark" and "tax efficient" in the same sentence. Denmark is notorious for high taxes.

Right now there's a huge scandal about Danish companies that have moved to European tax havens.

http://cphpost.dk/news/denmark-billed-as-perfect-tax-haven.8...

Ireland also has a lot of other things going for it that make for a compelling business case. A highly educated English speaking work force that doesn't cost near what an equivalent employee in the US does. It's in the EU and the Eurozone. Land and buildings are inexpensive. It's a reasonably desirable place to live in Europe for other Europeans.

Is the cost of living in Ireland really that much lower than the US?

The fact that companies do this is in some ways a good thing. Their freedom to relocate and move profits acts as a check on governments continually raising taxes.

> The fact that companies do this is in some ways a good thing. Their freedom to relocate and move profits acts as a check on governments continually raising taxes.

Only on HN would massive large scale tax avoidance that has left Europe all but bankrupt would be rationalised as a good thing, because otherwise we could just feed the poor and that's no incentive to work in Apple's factories now is it!

>> "Only on HN would massive large scale tax avoidance that has left Europe all but bankrupt"

Yes, that's why our economies are screwed - tax avoidance. /s

I agree that it's wrong but the fact that the loopholes have been exposed and our governments have failed to fix them is the real issue. We need to do something Europe-wide because it seems each country is scared to close the loop holes because the businesses will simply move to another European country.

In the case of Greece, this is literally true.

It's part of the story. The other part is promising benefits etc to the population that they can't afford to pay for.

Europe is bankrupt because the benefits giving by politicians to secure their reelections are not paid for directly thereby allowing the public to not feel the price of the benefits.

taxing corporations is a means to do two things, indirectly tax your own population and tax another countries population for your benefit.

Corporate mobility like personal mobility is about the only means left to insure that there is some restraint on government spending. Hence the cries for one larger more encompassing governments; world or otherwise; which won't solve the problem but sound good to those who think they are being cheated of other people's money

Also worth noting that Apple has been around in Ireland since the 80s (Cork plant was open in 1981)

Sure, it make sense from the tax point of view. But is also less than 200 km away from the biggest Apple centre in Europe (with 3,000+ people working there).

It's amazing that €850m project is expected to bring only 300 jobs during multiple phases of construction. Avg'd out thats nearly €3m of expenditure per employee. Nearly double Apple average earnings per employee of $2m. Impressive!

Well seeing as how it's basically a one story building filled with computers, you can assume the truly vast majority of that money is to be spent on the computers made (and generating jobs) wherever they are sourced.

So Apple has built one other data center recently. Are they seeing this much growth from their video offerings to justify this?

I always thought that the primary video offering through Apple TV was NetFlix, not Apple's services.

Are these data centers to offering Video for iTunes or are they the storage for iPhoto/etc?

Or is Apple just moving off of others infrastructure to their own for efficiency sake?

What is the drivers for these huge data centers?

They do a lot more in 'the cloud' than video. The entire iTunes Store, iCloud (which now lets you backup your entire photo library), Maps, streaming music (iTunes Radio and Beats Music).

I guess. I just know in my house, the downloads of Apps, Maps, and Photos are really small compared to Video -- streaming video is +90% of our house's bandwidth.

But I guess at Apple's scale Apps, Maps and Photos add up to a lot.

Doesn't iCloud let you back up your entire iPhone/iPad? Not just your photo library:

Doesn't iCloud let you back up your entire iPhone/iPad? Not just your photo library?

Kinda surprised nobody has brought up the whole Microsoft Ireland thing going on right now.

Maybe Apple sees Ireland as a privacy conscious data-haven.

Hmm. This article refers to the data centre as an "Apple Factory" and misspells Tim Cook's name.

So they are building a search engine?

You can see the marketing already; it'll be Apple wading in on personal profiling and data capture with shiny marketing that points the finger squarely at Google.

I suspect their search engine will be crap however, unless they are logging everything you do with your phone :-D

Where did this trope come from? "profiling and data capture"

I'm not saying they dont do that- honestly I would not know, but why is that an argument against apple.. they have a business model that could support some notion of privacy- with google the product is you, so all they -KNOW- how to do is collect data and profile you.

> You can see the marketing already; it'll be Apple wading in on personal profiling and data capture with shiny marketing that points the finger squarely at Google. I suspect their search engine will be crap however, unless they are logging everything you do with your phone :-D

The difference between Apple and Google is that the former makes money by selling products and the latter makes money by providing free services, building profiles, and selling advertisements.

Even if Apple did start building profiles of users, their end goal would be to create a better user experience, get users into the Apple ecosystem, and sell them hardware. It would not be to directly make money from the search engine by building profiles and serving advertisements.

Personally, I would be completely fine with paying Apple a monthly fee for access to a fully featured search engine that doesn't profile its users.

Having said that, it's completely possible to build a good search engine without profiling users - for example, DuckDuckGo.

> The difference between Apple and Google is that the former makes money by selling products and the latter

You mean renting products. A device without root, with locked bootloader, without the ability to install any software that you wish is not really sold.

> You mean renting products.

No, I mean sold. Renting is when you no longer own a product once you stop paying for it.

I rent Netflix's service. I purchase my iPhone. Once I've paid for my iPhone, Apple won't take it back.

> A device without root, with locked bootloader, without the ability to install any software that you wish is not really sold.

It is. It's simply less valuable to someone who wants root, an unlocked boot loader, and the ability to install any software.

Would you say you purchase the new Keurig machines or would you say you rent them?

The fact that I cannot use my iDevice at all before connecting with apple servers (on an iPhone, just because I did not had sim during first boot, I was not able to use it even as an iPod) shows who controls what the device can do. It is not you - the owner who payed for it.

> Once I've paid for my iPhone, Apple won't take it back.

But they can still wipe it remotely ...

Oh you obviously own some amount of atoms and molecules. You just don't own and control what makes your device useful or device.

How about paying a monthly fee for a search engine that DID profile users but gave these users full control over how the data is used?

I dont see them building a search engine persay, but improving the capabilities of Siri. Which essentially is AI with machine learning and then a motherload of data mining behind the scenes.

Ah, I was born and raised in Athenry, so this is a very nice surprise :)

The fields there, would you say they lie low? Are they populated by small birds? b^)

Not really, it's mostly sheep and the un-employed :)

In all seriousness, it's a lovely little town, with some nice scenery and good people. This new data-centre should see at least a short-term boost to the local economy, which basically sank into a black-hole after The Collapse.

Are they populated by small birds?

We watched them fly once. Not anymore though.

Can't say having a competitive tax rate doesn't bring jobs!

The double Irish isn't a competitive tax rate. It is a tax evasion scheme. Just some links I found quickly:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/ireland-still-addi... http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/abolition-of-double-...

Corporation tax is low at 12.5% which is probably what the parent is referring to.

Actually it turns out corporations pay more tax in Ireland than they do in countries like France or Canada: http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/ireland-tax-haven-1796050-N...

If one can get rid of the large amount of work that goes into preparing taxes, many companies would prefer a simpler system as opposed to one riddled with loopholes for things like propane and natural gas tax breaks for mint farms; I am looking at you Washington!

The Double Irish is being phased out slowly. Here's a NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/business/international/ire...

This got announced at the last government budget - I could not make any claims about the economic repercussions one way or the other.

Data centres don't create many jobs. In 2011, Facebook stated that its data centres create roughly 1 job per 790 m² [1].

Apple's planned data centre is 166,000 m². That gives us a figure of ~210 jobs for this data centre. But that's based on a figure from four years ago, and given how aggressively companies have pursued automation and on-site staff reduction in data centres, it's likely that the 2015 figure is lower. Maybe a lot lower.

[1] http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-employment-density-of-a-ser...

What about the constructions jobs that it takes to build and maintain those data center warehouses?

Temporary jobs

Well there currently 0 jobs in that area, so I fail to see you point.

Seems like an awfully large datacenter - 1.7mil sq ft? That is more than 2x (closer to 3x) the size that Google/Amazon/Microsoft build.

Apple chief executive Tim Cooke?

Why is data centre in quotes? Is it not a real data center?

This is so incredibly stupid. Latency to Ireland from all over western europe is way more than anywhere else.

Irelands tax evasion methods will not last.

They're building one in Denmark too...

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/02/23Apple-to-Invest-1-...

I don't think Denmark is known for its low tax rates?

Oh come on. You got stats to back that up?

Anyway. Maybe it's going to serve North America?

Here, I drew (on) a fiber-optic cable map for you: http://imgur.com/yoEo9km (first time I've ever used imgur to make a point, heh)

Seems like this is the cable: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/24814-us-300m-tran... - that'd be the Republic's `Taoiseach' (prime minister) grabbing a photo-op there.

Here's a news report from the Irish Times about the Apple investment, don't know if it has any additional news but anyhow...: http://www.irishtimes.com/business/apple-s-decision-to-build...

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