The company estimates that the new facilities will support "thousands" of jobs, ranging from engineers to security and catering staff.
A Long-Term Bet on Nuclear Power
Alongside the construction projects, Google and Finland's state-owned energy company, Fortum, announced a 22-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) that will support the life extension and power upgrade of the Loviisa nuclear power plant through to 2050, with Google contracting for up to 50% of the plant's capacity.
In its announcement, Fortum explained that without its lifetime extension investment program, the Loviisa plant would be unable to continue operating beyond 2030. The Finnish company added that the plant currently employs approximately 580 people and supplies 10% of the country's electricity.
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that Google's historically large investment represented a "strong vote of confidence" in the Nordic country.
He praised Google's investment in Finland's digital economy, describing it as one of the main sources of growth the country has seen this century.
This is not Google's first major investment in Finland. In 2009, the company bought the Summa paper mill and surrounding land in Hamina, where it built its first data center, which opened in 2011. There are now seven data centers at the Hamina site.
The €13bn European investment comes despite an increasingly rocky relationship between Google and European authorities, with the company hit by hundreds of millions of euros in fines in July this year.
On that occasion, the European Commission announced two decisions finding Google non-compliant with the DMA. The first concerned Google "self-preferencing" its own services on Google Search over those of rival platforms, while the second involved restricting businesses from directing consumers toward "alternative, often cheaper, purchase channels", a practice known as "steering".
For these breaches, the Commission fined Google €460m ($534m) and €430m ($500m) respectively.
The Commission remarked in July that talks with Google were already underway on how the company might bring itself into compliance with its DMA obligations, noting that Google had begun making changes to address the steering issue.
Google was required to comply with the Commission's decision within 60 days. Failure to do so would have exposed the company to periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of its total worldwide turnover.
Google Complies with the Commission
Reuters reported this week that Google, on Tuesday, rolled out a series of changes to its search results in Europe in order to satisfy the Commission's demands. The company said the changes would degrade the user experience for consumers and raise costs for European businesses.
According to Reuters, Google described the changes introduced this week as the "largest reduction in quality of service" in the search engine's 29-year history.
"To comply with DMA requirements, we're making significant changes to Search in Europe", Google's senior vice-president for knowledge and information, Nick Fox, told Reuters in an exclusive statement.
"These changes degrade the user experience for Europeans – boosting online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses, and removing helpful features people rely on every day", he noted, adding that users outside the EU would not be affected.
Tensions between American technology companies and European regulators have become a persistent sticking point in transatlantic relations, with the Trump administration accusing Europe of overstepping its jurisdiction in ways that hinder the free operation of US businesses.
Following the Commission's decision to fine Google in July, President Trump said that Washington would launch an investigation into the EU's "robbing" of American companies.
"The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct", Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social.
