Google CEO Sundar Pichai yesterday announced that the company will expand its US footprint into several new states, including Nebraska, Nevada, and Oklahoma.
The company plans to build new offices and data centers across the country, citing more than 10,000 construction jobs in those areas and total investments of more than $13 billion.
In 2018, the company invested $9 billion in facility expansions.
“With this new investment, Google will now have a home in 24 total states, including data centers in 13 communities,” Pichai wrote in a blog post. “2019 marks the second year in a row we’ll be growing faster outside of the Bay Area than in it.”
By expanding to more rural parts of America, Google is attempting to create jobs that feel more accessible to the local communities.
Most of the efforts in middle America are data centers that support the core of Google’s search engine, cloud computing, and YouTube businesses.
However, Google’s engineering, sales, and marketing jobs (some of the company’s best-paying positions) are still mostly located in its coastal offices in the Bay Area, Massachusetts, Los Angeles, and New York. (The latter will see a new $1 billion office on the west side of Manhattan.) It’s also expanding offices in larger cities like Chicago and Austin.
So far, most of Google’s facility development plans in the US have been met with little opposition outside of the Bay Area.
While Google claims that it will double its workforce in Virginia, both New York City and Northern Virginia are also locations Amazon has selected for its secondary headquarters.
Amazon faced heavy backlash to its proposed office location in Queens, New York, however, and it’s reportedly reconsidering the site.
Pichai did not specify how many jobs will be available at the new data centers in areas it’s never been in before or when the offices are expected to open.
The CEO did thank support from “local partners,” but he did not specify any potential tax incentives. (New York and Virginia offered Amazon up to $2 billion in tax credits and other incentives to build in their states.)
Today’s announcement comes just weeks after Apple touted its own efforts to invest in Stateside jobs and operations. According to the company, it increased its spending with American suppliers by 10 percent between 2017 and 2018.