# of Data Center Employees (Yahoo, Ask.com, Intuit, and Microsoft) in Washington Columbia Basin

I've seen #'s thrown around that Google employs 200 people at a data center

Eventually, we plan to employ approximately 200 people, ranging from technology assistants to experienced data center managers. We’re confident this $600 million investment will be good for Council Bluffs, Google and our Internet users.

In the Columbia Basin Herald reports on total employment changes, if you add up Yahoo, Ask,com, Intuit and Microsoft employee #'s they add up to 180.  Something seems strange that 4 big data centers in the Columbia Basin have less employees than one Google data center.  What are those 200 people doing?  Are they maintaining and building Google's custom servers?  All of the below people use industry standard servers.

In April the first of three data centers in Quincy went live. The Microsoft data center will be used to house information that is essential to Microsoft's Windows Live Internet service. Employment at Microsoft was around 50 employees in April and will continue to increase as more servers are added to the facility.

In mid June, Intuit, the makers of TurboTax and Quickbooks, broke ground for a data center in Quincy across the street from the Yahoo! data center. The facility is expected to be complete by fall of 2008 and will employ around 50 people.

In December Yahoo! officially declared its data center in Quincy operational as it held a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The data center will employ around 50 people and will house information for the Yahoo! search engine and other properties.

Ask.com , Moses Lake, Data Center, 30 people.