Beginning at Home
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I'm not a huge fan of Google and I think they're just as likely to do things in their own best interest as Microsoft (as opposed to my interests). However I do think that they are making some good efforts to balance out those "evil tendencies" with a concerted effort to do good things.
I saw this announcement they are Building a data center in Iowa, on the heels of the one they built in Oregon. There are lots of places Google could build data centers and they for sure don't need to pick places in the heartland of the US. They could put them all in 2 or 3 spots, and just grow them. I'm sure that they're getting a good deal and the economics make sense, but it does seem that Google is trying to keep most of their operations in the US and they're definitely helping out some of the smaller towns around the country.
I know the world is a global place, but I think you need to support your local community, or country, before you go overseas. Saving a few pennies per share isn't worth the move away from your home base of operations.
I try to support local businesses where I can and I'm happy to pay a little more to work with a local guy rather than go out across the Internet. It's worked out well for me, I've met some really nice people in the places I've lived and I enjoy knowing someone and having someone I can call by name
I hope that more corporations and businesses of all types remember that their local communities deserve their support and that's worth making a little less profit.
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I couldn't agree more! Here in the UK (though I doubt it's just confined to these shores!), it's often all too easy to overlook the local tradespeople for the bigger multinational companies, especially when it comes to convenience and cost. But I don't think you can really substitute those people who do what they do because they care about it, and that personal committment to serve their customer and ensure quality of service.
I think the same is true when it comes to companies themselves - and looking to use the talent and committment from your local community to serve the interests of your company can only help improve the overall quality of the product and service that is provided.
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Hey Steve
Are you saying that everyone should just login in to their LOCAL forums ? Like you, I would pay a few pennies more to support a local, but when the pennies pile up into hundreds or thousands, then I would review my options. That is what all corporations do and unless you offer value for money, it does not matter whether you are a local or an offshore techie
Keep an open mind !
Regards
Albert
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Google's decision to build local data centers may enjoy another sound business reason according to R.X. Cringely. He suggests a savvy plan to exploit the looming bandwidth issues as more folks download moves & the such. The idea makes sense to me.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20051117_000873.html
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Sorry, Steve, you lost me this time. Do you live in Iowa?
For the record - I go to my local pharmacist, not the cheaper mail order, because he can work with me if an issue arises, he knows my doctor (across the street), etc. I buy gas from the local guy who has to charge a good 10 cents more than the folks on the highway, because he's also the guy who will tow me out of a snow bank at 2 AM or will top up my brake fluid for free when I come in and try to convince him I must need a new master cylinder.
I "get it" about local. I don't live in Iowa.
Google no doubt is opening operations in Iowa for cheaper rents and labor. Good for them, good for Iowa, might be good for the shareholders - but no warm fuzzies for me personally.
I live in the New York metro area. My insurance claims are processed in
Nebraska. My credit card bills are processed in North Dakota. The reason is simple - the rents are lower, and there is an adequate, motivated work force for back office operations that can be routinized.
My experience, if I wanted to apply at Google, points toward back office, not research (well educated, but I don't have the sheepskins).
So, not good for me, locally, if that kind of thing moves to Iowa.
Also not good for me: Google tends to hire younger people, not people with decades of experience. My 25 years experience with large relational databases on EBO (Everything But Oracle) is useful - but not to them: and I cost two to three times more than someone 3 years out of school, who they can grow the way they want. You don't start bonzai with an old tree, I presume.
Google, of all companies, has no reason to prioritize putting facilities in the US, except if they find that it's best for them.
For many US companies, moving operations out of the US is a shot in the foot. Being unused to building a work relationship where the people - no matter how trained in US English and work culture - are not operating under default US assumptions can be difficult for a US-centric company.
It's going to take a lot of adjustment to make it work - like any relationship.
Google has navigated quite tricky waters with cultures as different from theirs as the Chinese government's apparatchniks.
So I'm not sure what your warm fuzzies for this move of Google's are. I suspect it makes good business sense, I suspect it may take jobs out of the west and east coast cities they are in.
Which does not give me the same warm fuzzies as Tom at Bob's Service, Pete at River Pharmacy, Dr. Delia, my dentist, Sanjay whose deli I buy my coffee at.
I also suspect the Iowa center may employ some older people - but not because of tech experience: rather, because retired teachers, women who spent their 30's and 40's raising a family, etc, are a fantastic work force, usually with a strong work ethic (after teaching or raising kids, it's almost not work - "all I have to do is sit here and talk on the phone all day - to adults?")
Roger L Reid
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Don't tell steveb--but I still use Google as my home page & primary search engine. I look forward to the day that Live can provide the power of Google; in the meantime, I'm too busy supporting my customers to waste time.
What I don't get is GOOG's multiple of 45 with ubiquitous projections for another $40, $50, even $100 more before the stock peaks. Of course, the prognosticators have been wrong before, but that's what kept me from buying in at $300, then $400...
Google strikes me as doing a lot of things right. Whatever their motivations are, good for them for building data centers throughout the country.
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There are good reasons to buy local, but 'warm fuzzy' isn't one of them.
Every transaction has priorities. Sometimes it's price, sometimes it's specialized service, and sometimes it's maintaining a relationship (my mechanic knows that I fix a lot of stuff myself on my old cars, and I bring it to him when it's too much trouble or I don't have the time or tools-- and doesn't try to sell me a laundry list of services I don't want)
But in the end, there needs to be rational reason for the choice.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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I don't live in Iowa and I use Google too. I've been disappointed in Live, though the MS folks at TechEd claim it's much better.
I'm sure Google made the decision that was best for them, but I think they also consider keeping operations in the US where possible and they could have expanded an existing operation. From what I've heard from friends that works at a large, Fortune 50 technology company, they have 3 data center in the US, each of them huge. Google seems to be targeting some smaller communities and giving them a little boost.
Granted that's probably 20th on their list of reasons why, but I think it's still there.
My point was to support locals when you can and when it makes sense. It definitely gives me a good feeling to have that relationship with local people, but I don't do it exclusively. I still buy books from Amazon, but I also hit the local guy at times. I tend to hit one particular Subway in my community, sometimes passing others on the way home because I like the guy.
It's not that it should be the overriding factor, but when you can make the choice and other things being equal, I think it's good to support the local guy.
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Oh - which subway - the IRT, the IND, or the BMT? It's good to have a choice!
(Of course, "local" in a subway isn't so good if you work near an express stop).
Happy Independence Day, Steve.
Clearly, my "local" and yours are not the same, so clearly we'll see this differently
for perfectly good reasons. Living in a large east coast center of business and culture, I tend to meet many more Europeans and Asians day to day than I do Midwesterners wjo still identify with the Midwest. So Iowa isn't as local to me
as London. I can be in London in five hours on a single plane. Iowa - not. Iowa is no closer to me than Minsk.
Another good reason for Iowa BTW (as I tend to think in terms of disaster recovery):
It makes a HUGE amount of sense to have a data center well away from the coasts but still within US territory - losing Google these days I think would significantly affect the country economically (and really start us non-linear pursuers of tangential knowledge on some serious cold turkey!)
This reminds me - I really wish Indian Point Nuclear Power plant was NOT local to me!
Roger L Reid
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I do it too. It's an expanding circle. Neighborhood, town section, town, metropole, county (Canadians call then Ridings. What are they in the UK), State, region, country, continent, hemisphere, planet. Next will be...what?
I use Goolge. I use Ask.com and never asked where Ask is. I use IMDB.com and I know that they are in Rome. I don't mean Rome, Georgia in the southeast US either.
I talk to all of you lot and don't much care where you are. There are certain things that I like having human to talk to live about some things. We are getting a new home mortgage and I picked the company because the do all the side work in house and keep the customer service "first contact" with them so that I have some one local that I can talk to when things go wrong.
My wife is blind (why else you think she married me?) and gets directory assistance on the phone for free. She gets so frustrated trying to get address and phone number for a local bussiness and the operators are in the Philippines.
ATBCharles Kincaid
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Steve, the whole nativist thing is silly. Don't get me wrong, I know it's one of your hobby horses and I'd love to buy "Made in America" if I could find it because it makes me feel good and patriotic (usually at a higher price than I could get "Made in China"), but that whole buy-local campaign was subverted successfully by the Chinese as a Tzu-Zu-inspired terror campaign upon the U.S. consumer population and is probably as ineffectual as the "Union Label" campaigns of yesteryear. If somebody starts up the "Buy Union" campaign again, my "right to work" bayonet is going to come out...
Google buys where it makes sense. I think they made a good move in Iowa, but I wish they'd done it in West Texas hill country... Or Wyoming. Microsoft built its most recent data center in rural Washington for similar reasons. If local governments give good incentives on taxes and there aren't any other deal-breakers, it gets signed and everybody's happy. And if it provides plenty of good marketing copy? The more, the better. Great for Iowa! Not great for California. How do you think The Governator feels about losing those jobs and supporting commerce to corn-fed country hicks?
It also requires some operational maturity for Google's dbas (picture me trying desperately to find the relevance to databases) because the disaster planning in Iowa is much different than it is in Silicon Valley. The flooding in the Midwest doesn't make the news, unless it's accompanied by an oil spill, like it was yesterday and today... and Iowa doesn't have the same volume of tornadoes that Oklahoma does, but it gets its share. Not to mention the occasional pesky snowfall that downs powerlines, despite Algore's best intentions to warm up the planet. But I digress.
I have a lot of friends at Conoco-Phillips (who outsource 'internally' to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, among other places) and those in the IT divisions live in constant fear of "being sentenced to Bartlesville." If you work for Conoco-Phillips and your job is deemed to be relocatable, you get the option to move with it, but... not many folks who are accustomed to big city life are mentally and emotionally prepared to move there. And the barriers to interviewing with another company become very high from the middle of nowhere, should you decide that you no longer wish to remain aboard the Good Ship Conoco.
I'm pretty sure that Wal-Mart puts a lot of operations in Bentonville, Arkansas for the same reasons.
Business move or grow to a place because it makes sense in dollars. Halliburton moves world headquarters to Dubai. Good for Dubai. Good for Halliburton's shareholders. Bad for Houston? Not really, other than losing the status of not being the home of Halliburton's world HQ. Halliburton's "regional HQ" is still just down the street in H-town and employs just as many people, minus the CEO and his personal assistant.
[For the guy who didn't want the nuclear power plant in his backyard: please send it down here. Electricity costs for air conditioning are killer here and I'd love to have a nuclear power plant dropped on top of a couple "blighted" neighborhoods. The Supreme Court says we can take 'em and make economic development projects out of 'em, right?]
A business that makes business decisions for any non-economic reason is doomed. We individuals are responsible for the ethical context, not the corporations. I think the Bored of Directors and Shareholders should be held accountable for the unethical actions done by the companies in their charge, and that's up to us as consumers to verify and enforce. But I digress...
By the way, when was the last time Ben & Jerry's, Starbucks or Amazon.com really dug deep for the rainforests? It was great PR when you're starting up a company or when sales start to flag, but it's just marketing, people!! Just like the New York Times giving away pictures of Nascar drivers with every new subscription in certain parts of the country. Their business is hurting, and they've identified a means to absorb a new demographic! If you believe otherwise, sell their stock because it's baaad sign for profitability if it's "more than just marketing."
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Steve,
What is wrong with Iowa? The people there needs a job too. Also there are a lot of high tech company in Minnesota, it would attract a lot of good people.
One thing at least Iowa is part of United States. Do you want them to build a Goodleplex in India or China or Aruba?
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I'd relocate to Aruba. Anybody know if they need database architects there? For anything besides the offshore gambling establishments and/or the money launderers, I mean.
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There's nothing wrong with Iowa. I thought I was supporting Google's choice to keep their operations in the US. I think it's great they're moving into smaller communities and providing jobs and work.
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