Updated News Around the World

Google promises Greece 20K jobs with cloud expansion

Google promises Greece 20K jobs with cloud expansion
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis speaks at a Google Cloud event in Athens on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. Google announced Thursday that it is expending is cloud infrastructure to Greece, following similar investments by tech giants Microsoft and Amazon. Credit: AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris

Google announced plans Thursday to expand its cloud services infrastructure to Greece, promising to create nearly 20,000 jobs through direct investment and partnerships by the end of the decade.

The move follows plans by Microsoft, announced two years ago, to invest $1 billion to create data centers near Athens, as well as pledges by other tech giants including Cisco and Amazon to set up facilities in Greece.

“We can dramatically increase and accelerate innovation and digital transformation in Greece,” Adaire Fox-Martin, president of Google Cloud International, told reporters in Athens.

She also announced plans to create Google-funded research centers for tech sustainability and artificial intelligence in two regional Greek cities, adding that the total investments were expected to add 2.2 billion euros to the Greek economy by 2030.

Google officials did not give details of the company’s planned investment to create the cloud infrastructure in Greece or a timeline of the project.

Greece has bet heavily on boosting its once-sluggish tech sector since exiting successive international bailout programs four years ago, hoping to diversify an economy heavily reliant on tourism and lure back thousands of university graduates in the sector who worked abroad during the financial crisis.

  • Google promises Greece 20K jobs with cloud expansion
    Peggy Antonakou, Google’s general manager Southeast Europe speaks at a Google Cloud event in Athens on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. Google announced Thursday that it is expending is cloud infrastructure to Greece, following similar investments by tech giants Microsoft and Amazon. Credit: AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris
  • Google promises Greece 20K jobs with cloud expansion
    From left to right , Adaire Fox-Martin, president of Google Cloud International , Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Peggy Antonakou, Google’s general manager Southeast Europe attend a Google Cloud event in Athens on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. Google announced Thursday that it is expending is cloud infrastructure to Greece, following similar investments by tech giants Microsoft and Amazon. Credit: AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris

At 11.4% in July, Greece has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union after Spain.

Several government agencies, including the health ministry and hospital administration, are expected to integrate the use of Google’s cloud services after the new infrastructure is available, company officials said.

Hundreds of government-run administrative services—including drug prescriptions from public hospitals and applications for uncontested divorce—were made available online during the pandemic.

The Google investment “is the latest in a chain of major business improvements,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at the company event.

“This didn’t just happen on its own: We had to modernize the institutional and regulatory framework and change people’s mindsets,” he said. “And we had to take on the beast of bureaucracy.”


Microsoft plans $1 billion data center venture in Greece


© 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Citation:
Google promises Greece 20K jobs with cloud expansion (2022, September 29)
retrieved 29 September 2022
from https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-google-greece-20k-jobs-cloud.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

For all the latest Technology News Click Here 

 For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! NewsUpdate is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.