Google CEO Sundar Pichai Pledges $10B U.S. Investment For 2020

Google is touting how much it’s going to spend boosting local economies this year as attorneys general in many of those same states gear up for new investigations into the Internet giant’s potential anti-competitive business practices.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday pledged to spend $10 billion this year on adding offices and building out data centers across the United States.

The internet giant’s investments will be focused in 11 of the 26 states in which Google already operates, Pichai said in a blog post. Those states are Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and California.

The planned 2020 spend will create thousands of jobs and stimulate local economies in many of the same jurisdictions in which state attorneys general are preparing probes into Google’s advertising, search and Android businesses.

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Last year, Pichai said Google invested $13 billion “in communities from South Carolina to Nevada.”

“These investments will create thousands of jobs—including roles within Google, construction jobs in data centers and renewable energy facilities, and opportunities in local businesses in surrounding towns and communities,” Pichai said.

In Seattle, Google is expanding a new Google Cloud campus to boost its enterprise cloud business in the backyard of competitors Amazon and Microsoft, and it is completing “a major development” in neighboring Kirkland to open later in the year.

In Atlanta, Google will bring in new engineering teams to its office.

Google also plans to build new data centers in Ohio while it expands its facilities in Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

New York City will see the opening of Google’s Hudson Square campus, which could lead to doubling the workforce there by 2028.

Google will also be expanding offices and headcount with them in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Colorado.

Investments of the kind Google is making “go a long way in revitalizing the local business communities,” said Dj Das, CEO of San Francisco-based Google Cloud partner Third Eye Consulting.

They can also benefit other technology vendors who sell hardware and data center software, Das said.

A settlement Google reached last week with state AGs over whether they can hire consultants to work on their investigations has cleared the way for comprehensive probes similar to those that have led to billions of dollars of fines from European regulators.

Texas, among the states Google is aiming to invest in this year, is leading an investigation that will scrutinize Google’s digital advertising business for anticompetitive behavior. But 49 other AGs, representing most states and some U.S. territories, are participating in a bipartisan investigation that will likely span into Search and Android before its through.