The Wall Street Journal said that Google Inc.'s opening of a €200 million ($273 million) server hall in Hamina, Finland, over the weekend is boosting Scandinavian hopes that other big Internet companies will choose to build data centers in the region, attracted by its cold climate and low electricity prices.

 

"When building a data center, there are a whole bunch of cost items involved. These include the cost of land, the actual building and the server equipment. But what has been the main focal point in recent years is the cost of cooling servers," says Al Verney, a spokesman at Google Benelux.

Several Swedish northern town are also promoting them self as ideal locations for data centers.

An undisclosed major U.S. Internet company, widely believed to be Facebook, is planning to build a giant data center outside the town center of Luleå.

"Some would say our climate is nothing short of depressing, but if you are running a data center, it's ideal," Matz Engman, a local entrepreneur who heads the Aurorum Science Park in Luleå, told the WSJ. "Up here you're able to cool a data center all year-round, without using any other cooling other than the ambient air."