Valleywag
The fabulously profitable search engine, having pitted two depressed areas in the Carolinas against eachother, has picked Lenoir in Caldwell County as the location of a giant new server farm. I'm sure there will be plenty of rhetoric about the virtues of Lenoir, a former center for North Carolina's battered furniture industry. But Google just chose the county from which it could extract the most grotesque tax breaks.
Google was offered 150 acres on a plate, a 30-year break on real-estate taxes, and a grant from the state government. In short, a $500,000 sweetener for each of the 200 jobs Google will create.
There's nothing that new about states, particularly in the South, competing for new plants. North Carolina pitched for the BMW assembly line which was ultimately located in Greenville, in neighboring South Carolina.
Big auto plants often collect around them suppliers' smaller factories, which enlarges their economic impact. The Google server farm, despite the search engine's status as icon of the new digital age, will need electricity, air-conditioners — and thorough mopping.
Comments
I'm sure a huge cheer by realtors in the area just went up, because the scramble for elite properties, like these (http://www.homesandland.com/ListingSearchReturn.cfm?PersonId=748981), has just started, for the poor, poor folks from Mountain View that will be "asked kindly" to go tend the modern-equivalent of a steam-driven industrial loom in this NC hinterland.
From the article:
the jobs available at Google (ed., in Lenoir, NC) will average about $48,300
Well, I predict this output will be populated by a significant contingent of H1-Bers, unless people on the left coast are chomping at the bit to get out of their high-rent digs into a lower-cost housing market.
Jiaozi and palak paneer mixes it up with brunswick stew, y'all!
I doubt they'd move anyone from santa clara to lenoir; I imagine most of these jobs are little more than lightbulb changers. all the meaningful knowledge work will be done from afar, all they need here are grunts to rack, plug, and power on.
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