Google considers building large data centre in Vietnam

The newswire points out that Google is weighing setting up a "hyperscale" data centre close to Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s southern economic hub.

The investment, the size of which the source did not specify, would serve as a shot in the arm for Vietnam, which has so far failed to attract major overseas capital in data centres due to its patchy infrastructure, with large tech companies instead preferring to house their centres in rival nations around the region.

It is not clear how quickly Google would reach a decision on any investment, but internal talks were taking place and the data centre could be ready by 2027.

A hyperscale data centre with a power consumption capacity of 50 megawatts (MW) could cost between $300 million and US$650 million, according to estimates based on data published by real estate consultant Jones Lang LaSalle in a report this year on data centres in Vietnam.

Google's move was largely motivated by the large number of its domestic and foreign cloud services clients in Vietnam, as well as the country's expanding digital economy, said the media outlet, noting that the nation was one of the fastest-growing markets for YouTube, Google's popular online video sharing platform.

Currently, the top data centre operators in the country, based on computing space, are industrial investment firm IDC Becamex and telecommunications company VNPT, both Vietnamese state-owned enterprises, according to an internal market report by an industrial park in Vietnam seen by Reuters.

This comes following Nikkei reporting in May that Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba was considering building a data centre in Vietnam.