Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Google Headed for The Dalles

Almost at the same moment that I was driving through The Dalles, OR, on my way to my first art show of the year in Corvallis, Google was announcing the they had bought 30 acres of land in The Dalles for a new technology infrastructure facility

Google, which is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, is expected to pay $1.87 million for a parcel of industrial-zoned land 85 miles east of Portland, with an option to buy three other area sites.

The new facility would be Google's second operations outpost up here in the Pacific Northwest. Last November, Google opened an office in Kirkland, WA, just a few miles from the headquarters of Microsoft, which recently launched a rival search engine.

Spokesmen for both Google and the Port of The Dalles declined to detail specific plans for facilities at the site. Construction is expected to begin soon, which is estimated to cost between $5 million and $20 million.

Google's search engine, which pulls data from an index of more than 8 billion Web pages, is run over a distributed network of computers housed in numerous facilities worldwide. The facility would likely create between 50 and 100 jobs over time, paying an estimated average of $60,000 annually with salary and benefits.

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