Long courtship brought Internet giant to state

Just hours after taking office last year, South Carolina Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor already had a big fish on the line: Representatives of Internet giant Google Inc. were coming to his office to discuss a potential $600 million investment.

"A first meeting in economic development is a lot like a first date - you never know how it's going to turn out," Taylor said. "But they were very upfront early on about this thing. ... I always felt pretty positive about it."

As it turns out, his instincts were right. Breaking months of silence, Google confirmed Wednesday that it is building a data-processing center that will employ 200 people near Goose Creek. Gov. Mark Sanford and various economic development officials also crowed about the project, lauding it as a major boon to the state's economy.

"Given the stature of this company and the magnitude of this investment, this is a real win for South Carolina," Sanford said in a statement.

Speculation about Google's investment hit the street in December, but the search-engine giant first started talking to officials from South Carolina in the fall of 2005, said Rhett Weiss, the company's head of strategic development. Weiss said he visited the state for the first time in December of that year and returned about a dozen times to look at land and eventually to close the nearly $17 million purchase of its 520-acre property in Mount Holly Commerce Park, off U.S. Highway 52.

"We studied this site to death," he said. "You could say I've been here enough times to lose count."

The state said it will grant Google $4.8 million in tax breaks over 10 years if it creates 200 jobs. And lawmakers tweaked the South Carolina code so that the tech company will not be taxed on electricity and capital investment, exemptions that have traditionally been offered to large old-line manufacturers. Google will qualify for more incentives if it doubles its payroll.

While Google has no immediate plans to hire more than 200 workers, its Berkeley County site could someday accommodate 400 employees in a campus-like series of buildings. Weiss said the company bought more property than it needs right now "to give us some elbow room."

The planned data facility that is now under construction will house a huge "server farm," or banks of computers that will process Google data searches, e-mails sent from Google "gmail" accounts, and map and photo requests. It is expected to help the company cut its response time on the tide of Web traffic generated on the East Coast. The center also will serve as a backup for other Google server farms.

The main attractions for Google were the relatively cheap power and water. The company needs an abundance of both to run and cool its computers but would not specify how much. Google's building plan calls for cooling towers and a high-voltage electric substation.

In luring Google, the Lowcountry not only won one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, but an outfit recently ranked by Fortune magazine as the best U.S. employer. Workers at the Goose Creek facility will earn $48,000 a year on average, the company said. They each will each receive stock or stock options, unlimited sick days and a host of at-work perks made famous at Silicon Valley tech firms: free meals, a gym, basketball hoops and ping-pong tables. New fathers will get paternity leave. And the company may offer child-care and commuter shuttles, depending on employee requests.

Most of the hires will be engineers, electricians and programmers, trained to tune up and maintain the computers. A small staff will oversee the facility itself: landscaping, security and food service. While Google is known for turning away piles of impressive job applications peppered with Ivy League names, the firm also hires a lot of skilled military veterans and people straight out of high school, said Andy Johnson, who manages the company's East Coast infrastructure. The first group of employees will punch in around the end of the year, Johnson said.

The company is building a similar data center in Lenoir, N.C., and has applied for permits to build on 466 acres that it recently bought about 20 miles north of Columbia.