Google eyes next SEA data centre in Indonesia

Google is looking to open its first data centre in Indonesia. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Marketing Interactive that the tech company has ongoing plans to open a new data centre in Jakarta over the next year. 

The tech company first announced more progress for its Google Cloud in Asia Pacific in 2018, and said Hong Kong and Indonesia were among the markets. Dave Stiver, senior product manager, GeoExpansion at Google said in a blog post that the company is constantly investing in its global technology infrastructure to have the capacity in running mission-critical services, with the latency that users expect. In addition, Google is also working towards building regional capacity that meets customers' availability, data residency, and sustainability needs. 

According to The Jakarta Post, a company executive said that Google is potentially launching one in Indonesia to meet the demand for cloud computing services in the nation. Google Cloud Indonesia’s country director Megawaty Khie said in the article that with a data centre, the tech company will be able to roll out “reliable cloud infrastructure” to its consumers. 

This comes following the launch of its third data centre in Singapore in 2018. At the time, the tech giant said it aims to support the growing number of Internet users in Southeast Asia, as well as the new and existing customers of Google’s Cloud Platform. Companies that were on Google’s Cloud Platform in Singapore included Singapore Airlines, MyRepublic, Ninjavan and Wego. Google currently has three data centres in Singapore, first constructed in 2011, second completed in 2015 and third in 2018. The expansion overall brought Google’s total long-term investment in its data centres in Singapore to US$850 million. This comes as Google Cloud was expanding its footprint in Asia. 

Meanwhile, Google recently has been taking steps to scrap third-party cookies and blocking intrusive ads for greater privacy and transparency. As users demand transparency, choice and control over how their data is used, Google said its web ecosystem too has to evolve to meet these increasing needs. As such, Google Chrome has officially limited insecure cross-site tracking as of February 2020.

In addition, Google Chrome is also blocking intrusive ad formats within short form videos from 5 August 2020. The ad formats affected will be long, non-skippable pre-roll ads or groups of ads longer than 31 seconds that appear before a video and that cannot be skipped within the first five seconds; mid-roll ads of any duration that appear in the middle of a video, interrupting the user’s experience; and image or text ads that appear on top of a playing video and are in the middle 1/3 of the video player window or cover more than 20% of the video content.

Most recently, Google removed nearly 600 apps from the Google Play Store for containing deceptive or disruptive ads. The tech company also banned these apps from its ad monetisation platforms Google AdMob and Google Ad Manager, as part of its ongoing efforts to combat mobile ad fraud. Currently, Google has a dedicated teams focused on detecting and stopping malicious developers that attempt to defraud the mobile ecosystem.

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