Google to build data center in Alabama

Google is planning to convert an old power plant in Alabama into a data center running on renewable energy to fuel the additional computing capacity needed to process internet search requests, show digital video, give directions, deliver email and store photos. The $600 million project announced marks Google's first commitment in eight years to build a US data center. It will be the internet company's 14th data center in the world, including six others in the US. When it's completed, the Alabama data center is expected to create about 100 new jobs, Governor Robert Bentley said.

The data center will rely solely on renewable energy, helping to minimize the pollution created by the power demands of rows upon rows of computer servers running around the clock. Two other Google data centers in the US, located in Iowa and Oklahoma, already run entirely on wind power.

Google relies on the data centers to ensure a wide array of digital services and products are delivered to more than 1 billion people worldwide. The company's search engine alone is a computing hog because it fields more than 100 billion queries each month and indexes pertinent links among the roughly 60 trillion website addresses that it now comes across while scanning the internet.