To wonder why Google is setting up a HUGE AI center in India and not in the UK?

[LadyGillingham]

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/google-invest-10-billion-data-centre-south-india-2025-10-14/

India has crazy salaries ! FAANG+ companies employ tens of thousands in India and pay them USD salaries. Why arent these companies investing in the UK? We are an English speaking nation, with world class universities.

A few things I can tell you from the rule book India’s IT industry played by and came out successful every time. They offered land for free to these companies and built infrastructure/connectivity around it. They gave these companies insane tax breaks. The companies, in return, created a lot of employment. Hotels, resultants, businesses boomed and govt started to get huge returns from taxes. They rinsed and repeated this in several cities. Result ? US like multi citi tech hubs creating employment and prosperity to people and Government alike.

It’s stupid to throw crazy taxes at corporations to fund illegals immigrants in hotels. Companies just move elsewhere. Result? What we have now. High unemployment, stupidly high taxes for the employed, rich moving away, companies moving away, tax deficits and then increase taxes again to fund shit initiatives, cut funding for NHS and Schools. Rinse and repeat, race to the bottom.

Google seems to be managing:

share.google/yRBw9oGxnlK31XdOI

I reckon the flags strung up everywhere is a lovely welcome for them, don’t you think?

Because they are just being patriotic aren’t they, no racist overtones at all.

I bet brown, highly skilled individuals are scrambling over themselves to become teachers to these wonderful patriotic students, why earn 6/7 figures when you can take a UK teacher’s salary with students who definitely won’t give you any racist backchat and be eager to learn from a brown immigrant.

It’s exactly the message the flags send out.

Energy infrastructure will be a huge factor. UK energy costs are huge and India has put massive investment into this. It also has a much more supportive regulatory environment e.g AI databank to centralise data.

Some people are so concerned about "the economy" that they forget to consider actual humans. What's the point in making more money overall if the quality of life for most people suffers as a result?

Oh my. You’re very literal aren’t you?!

And you need to Google the meaning of sarcasm. I mean the emoji was a bit of a giveaway…

I guess in the future countries like China and India are going to be the global superpowers. We will be some irrelevant, economically struggling small country. It all seems to be going to the dogs here.

Google is a global business. They will have more than one datacentre, and it makes sense to have them geographically dispersed for resilience. Better to lose one site there than two sites there, whether it'sbecause of war, flooding, earthquake or whatever. .

Once built, you need a few people on site to swap out failed bits of hardware once in a while, and for maintenance of electricity and plumbing, mostly for HVAC. But you can put most of the workers anywhere else you want, as long as they have a laptop and data connection. I've supported servers across Europe, Canada, the USA, Latin America, India, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong - and I've only ever physically worked in the UK.

This will be cheaper than building a DC here or in Europe (which Google already have,) but it won't be the only factor.

There are organisations that have restrictions on where data is physically held; I couldn't work on machines that were on a German government contract, because while the hardware being in Germany wouldn't be a restriction, me not being a German citizen would be.

I'm not sure why anyone would really expect Google to build a giant DC here, over many other possible locations, and particularly given the drought we had this summer, environmentally at least, it's a good thing.

I don't think India can be a superpower until it does something about its huge income disparity, caste issues, women's safety, infrastructure, corruption and all the deeply complicated problems of a country its size. China is way ahead in all those.

That said, everytime I visit, I am struck by the optimism, work ethic and can-do attitude of young people there.

Perhaps there's more water available there. The UK's water resources are struggling and AI reportedly uses enormous amounts.

No, definitely not. India struggles for water.
But they need to employ all the young people somehow. Very young nation.

America has those issues (minus the caste system) and manages.

America is very different from India.
I am not sure it's doing so well either.

But I have gone off on a tangent.

But we have the advantage of a stable climate Of course bigger countries are going to catch up, that's a good thing. And as they develop they will demand higher wages and better conditions amd then they'll no longer be so cheap. And work will come back here, it's already happened in China.

To repeat: GOOGLE IS BUILDING AI DATACENTRES IN THE UK.

https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/united-kingdom/waltham-cross-data-centre/

As is Microsoft:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79vq1453r7o

I guess the UK centres don't make headlines.

Google can do what it likes where it likes, the UK isn't owed anything

Daft question. The answer is no doubt the same reason that many companies have their call centres, IT stuff etc there - English speaking, lower wages, lower overheads, keen employees, etc etc.

That’s an incredibly shallow way of looking at things. I hope you understand a white person with no qualifications cannot replace a brown NHS doctor. No, they are not stealing jobs. Skilled immigration. When local people are too lazy study subjects that are in demand, instead choose to either do minimum wage jobs with no qualifications or study subjects like “history of Art’ and then complain about a brown doctor taking his job!

Even as a brown person I can tell @frozendaisy is being sarcastic!

Ha salaries are way lower in india. Ive got a staff there & they are on much less than uk equivalent

Also american tech companies like to hire people in markets with weak labour laws so they can maintain long hours culture, hire & fire at will etc.

What a bizarre post.

If British people want a huge AI data center, with its pros and cons, maybe we should be promoting UK businesses in the area, not importing in an American company to claim more of British assets? I mean, the OP blame high taxes for illegal migration, but have you seen the tax relief and money going to foreign companies of many stripes buying up British assets, raising the prices for everyone here? That's far more of a concern to me than google picking India for this.

As for why would a US company prefer the UK over India for a resource heavy industry - it's outsourcing for them either way, and either way they'll have to deal with the US GILTI and the rest of the corporate tax system for businesses by Americans outside of the US.

Higher tax while is an issue really isn't the main issue and neither is how that tax is spent. As a US company, they're already dealing with a mess in needing to deal with US system and how it handles businesses abroad. As others said, if they're going to leave the US which has weaker labour laws than the UK, then one with even weaker ones has ones for companies like google notorious for their poor practices. I don't want a race to the bottom on that.

I also have quite a few concerns on how they would use the land and other resources they need for an AI centre of that size. We already have enough water issues in many parts of the UK without adding in an additional significant drain to the area for something that has questionable benefits - yes, it'll provide tech jobs, but as is well known with google, what those employees make, the assets they make, end up belonging to google.

They really are. There's a foundation in the UK that was set up by computer boffins at Cambridge Uni making a super cheap, programmable computer to encourage kids and young people to code because Computing Science undergrads were arriving at Uni woefully underskilled to do their courses.

Let me tell you, underskilled is not a word anyone ever uses about India's young, talented, huge workforce when it comes to IT, tech, programming. They are so well qualified, partly because there's huge competition within that industry there.