The company announces an investment of more than 530 million euros to "accelerate the digital transition in Spain".
Google announced on Thursday in its blog that it will invest 650 million dollars (more than 530 million euros) over five years to "accelerate the digital transition in Spain". This was also announced by the company's general manager in Spain and Portugal, Fuencisla Clemares, to the Minister of Economy and Vice President of the Government, Nadia Calviño. The investment includes the installation in Malaga of a centre of excellence for cybersecurity that will offer "training, talks, workshops and mentoring on cybersecurity, as well as research and product development".
The more than 530 million will also be used to establish the first Cloud Region in Spain, announced in collaboration with Telefónica and with which Google aims to bring its strategic infrastructures closer to the country to improve its services in the area, and for the installation of the technology giant's first private submarine cable to connect Spain with the United States and the United Kingdom. The infrastructure, christened Grace Hooper, was announced last July and will be ready in 2022. According to the company, it will allow Spanish companies and public administrations to accelerate their transformation at scale and deploy the potential of cloud services with low latency and high performance.
The cybersecurity centre will be located in a 2,500 square metre space on the Paseo de la Farola in the Andalusian city. Google says it has chosen Malaga because the region "has great talent, a vibrant start-up ecosystem and incubators and accelerators that have been nurturing the tech scene for a long time". The new facilities will also become the workspace for Virus Total, a Malaga-based start-up acquired by the technology giant in 2012 and which operates in close collaboration with the University of Malaga.
The company is also committed to continuing with training in professional digital skills, "key for society to successfully embrace the opportunities of this changing world". In this regard, Clemares stressed that the company has long supported SMEs and individuals to be "more digitally prepared in this changing environment" and argued that the Cloud Region, along with the submarine cable, in collaboration with local partners, will allow companies and the public sector to be "more scalable and efficient in their business".
This move reinforces Malaga as a major technological hub especially linked to cybersecurity. Virus Total had the world's largest cybersecurity database in 2020, analysing more than two million files and URLs a day, half a million of them suspicious. Elevenpaths, owned by Telefónica, and the multinational Dekra are also headquartered in the sector.
