Yahoo gets hit with 7.9 sales tax for Quincy Data Center

Yahoo had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new facility in Quincy with David Filo, co-founder attending. A recent finding by the Washington state attorney general removes a 7.9 tax break for this new data center.

The loss of the tax break could keep Yahoo from investing in future phases of the data center that opened Monday, Filo said.

"So far everything has worked out well," he said, noting the favorable economic, political and geographic conditions that have made building data centers in the middle of farm fields in Central Washington a sensible thing to do. The abundance of cheap power available in the region is the bottom-line benefit for server farms, but the rural tax break is so significant that Yahoo would not have built in Quincy had it not been part of the equation, said Laurence Mann, a Yahoo senior vice president.

The sales tax break would have saved Yahoo and other data centers the 7.9 percent tax charged on construction and equipping of a facility, said Mike Gowrylow, a spokesman for the state Department of Revenue.

Microsoft opened a portion of a 500,000-square-foot data center in Quincy in April. The tech company Intuit also is building a facility in Quincy.

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Google's Dalles Data Center

This article is a little old, but I decided to collect information about data centers from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.  June 14, 2006 the NYtimes had an article about how hard it is to hide a data center as Google seeks more power.

Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power

Melanie Conner for The New York Times

Google is building two computing centers, top and left, each the size of a football field, in The Dalles, Ore.

Published: June 14, 2006

THE DALLES, Ore., June 8 — On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky.

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The New York Times

The complex, sprawling like an information-age factory, heralds a substantial expansion of a worldwide computing network handling billions of search queries a day and a growing repertory of other Internet services.

And odd as it may seem, the barren desert land surrounding the Columbia along the Oregon-Washington border — at the intersection of cheap electricity and readily accessible data networking — is the backdrop for a multibillion-dollar face-off among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that will determine dominance in the online world in the years ahead.

Microsoft and Yahoo have announced that they are building big data centers upstream in Wenatchee and Quincy, Wash., 130 miles to the north. But it is a race in which they are playing catch-up. Google remains far ahead in the global data-center race, and the scale of its complex here is evidence of its extraordinary ambition.

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Chicago next Green Data Center Location

In ZDNet GreenTech Pastures blog, Microsoft's latest data center in Northlake, IL is discussed as a Green Location.

From a tech industry standpoint, one big side effect of the software as a service (SaaS) movement will be the build-out of massive data centers capable of scaling to handle ever-growing user traffic. That doesn’t sound so green now, does it?

No wonder Google refuses to reveal just how much power its operations consume on a worldwide basis. In all fairness, arch-rival Microsoft also holds certain information related to its data centers pretty close to the vest. But the big Seattle-based software developer was eager to trumpet its move last month to invest about $500 million in a major data center located in Northlake, Ill.

The facility, being developed by green data center design expert Ascent in partnership with real estate company The Koman Group, will be Microsoft’s single largest data center when it comes online in the June 2008 timeframe.

Data Centers are interesting distribution logistics problems applied to information instead of goods. Chicago given its history of being a hub of commerce works well for information distribution.

Phil Horstmann, CEO of Ascent, says his company looks at each data center as an intersection of a lot of vitally important utilities—namely power, water and connectivity. The Northlake facility will feature a number of design innovations, such as an arrangement to tie right into nearby electricity transmission lines. Because Chicago is a deregulated market, his company can buy from 15 different utility companies.

Ascent's marketing site for the Northlake Data Center facility gives you an idea of the additional factors which made the site appealing.

Other green features of the area are cold air allows airside ecomomization for cooling, and Chicago power has a low carbon footprint. This Computerworld article discusses the most energy-efficient locations.

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Purple Yahoo Data Center in Quincy, WA

Found a posting about Yahoo's new data center. A bunch of us are wondering why Yahoo would paint their building purple? I've been to the Microsoft Data Center in Quincy a couple of times, and it is a lot bigger. I can't quote you the size, but if you walk around the building you'll have traveled 1.3 miles.  That's a lot bigger than 14,000 140,000 square ft (Below is a typo, the building is 140,000 sq ft) , and the Microsoft guys painted the roof white to help reflect the sun during the hot summers. I wonder how much hotter the building gets when they are purple? I've got to believe it was the PR/corporate image team who decided to paint the building purple.

Yahoo! builds new Data Center the green way

December 13, 2007 at 4:55 pm · Filed under Environment, Tech Industry

big_quincyexterior.jpg

A new 14,000 sq. ft Yahoo! data center was open in Quincy, Washington and had a welcome ribbon cutting by David Filo as well as Wylie Gustafson, the original guy who yodels “Yahoo!” at the end of commercials. Quincy, Washington was chosen as the prime location due to its fiber connectivity, network availability, affordable power, land and operations, and welcoming community. The best part about this data center was that it was custom built as opposed to all the other data centers that are usually rented. This allowed Yahoo! to put energy efficiency as a top priority in the design and construction of the data center. One advantange of being in Washington was the ability to draw in the cold air outside to cool the servers without using air conditioning. Carbon-free electricity using hydro and wind power the facility and all the lights operate on motion sensors. This is a great step in Yahoo!’s step in reducing energy consumption and becoming carbon neutral by the end of this year.

Here are more details about the Microsoft Data Center for comparison.

Microsoft has completed its first building at its Quincy, Washington data center and a leisurely walk around it is about 1.3 miles.

That little ditty comes from Michael Manos, senior director of Microsoft’s data center services unit. Manos was interviewed by Tina Wood at Channel 10.

Some other key highlights from Manos:

  • The general idea for Microsoft’s data centers is to make them a development platform (presumably for cloud services in the future).
  • Microsoft takes being green and sustainability seriously to be socially conscious and save money. Manos didn’t serve up many specifics.
  • The software giant goes through a 31-factor heat map to select locations for data centers. These factors include the price of land, power capacity and fiber-optic availability. These maps are also used to find good locations to position Microsoft for the future.
  • Microsoft has started a data center in San Antonio.
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Green IT URLs for EMEA audience

Kevin O'Donovan from Intel was nice enough to forward the following urls that he has found interesting for the EMEA audience.

Also, the Advanced Electronics and Information Technologies: The Innovation-Led Climate Change Solution Report was created in conjunction with many of our companies.

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