Nandini Roy Choudhury, writer
Brief news
- Google is investing $1 billion to expand cloud infrastructure and establish its first data center in Thailand, focusing on AI and digital economy growth.
- The Chonburi data center aims to meet rising demand for Google Cloud and services like Search and Maps.
- This investment seeks to unlock opportunities for Thai businesses and enhance education in AI technology amidst increasing competition from Microsoft and OpenAI.
Detailed news
On Monday, Google disclosed that it will allocate 36 billion Thai baht, or $1 billion, to Thailand’s cloud infrastructure expansion and the establishment of a new data center.
The decision signifies an enormous boost in Google’s expansion in Asia, placing artificial intelligence at the core of its international endeavors amid strong rivals from Microsoft and OpenAI.
In a post on its Thailand blog on Monday, Google announced that the investment would result in the establishment of its first data center in Thailand.
Cloud computing technology, which facilitates access to storage, compute, and analytics services via the internet, is fueled by data centers, which serve as the foundation of the contemporary digital economy.
Google has announced that its inaugural data center in Thailand will be situated in Chonburi, an eastern province of the country.
According to an English translation via Google Translate, Jackie Wang, Google’s Thailand country lead, stated in the blog post that the facility will “assist in meeting the increasing demand for Google Cloud and AI innovations, as well as popular Google services such as Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Workspace” in Thailand.
In addition to infrastructure development, Wang stated in the blog post that the $1 billion investment from Google into Thailand is also about “unlocking new opportunities for businesses, educators, and all Thais.”
“It is imperative to educate and upgrade Thais to utilize this technology as AI transforms industries,” she continued.
In a 2023 report published by e-Conomy SEA, Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company stated that Thailand’s digital economy is the second-largest in Southeast Asia and is anticipated to reach $50 billion by 2025.
Google is investing in the region with a concentration on AI in response to the pressure it is experiencing from its rival tech titans in the areas of cloud computing and AI.
The search engine technology of the internet behemoth is presently the most dominant on a global scale. However, the company has faced an increasing threat from the proliferation of generative AI tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
It is a technology that Google contributed to the development of through its early research on transformer models, which serve as the foundation for numerous generative AI models.
Nevertheless, Google is currently facing a threat from the use of generative AI products, including ChatGPT and Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, to locate information about objects.
Google filed an antitrust lawsuit with the European Commission last week, alleging that Microsoft is exploiting its dominant position in the cloud industry to stifle competition.
Source ; CNBC News
