Public records requests reveal the elaborate shell-company secrecy that Google uses when seeking subsidies for data-centers

It's not just Amazon and Apple that expect massive taxpayer subsidies in exchange for locating physical plant in your town: when Google builds a new data-center, it does so on condition of multimillion-dollar "incentives" from local governments -- but Google also demands extraordinary secrecy from local officials regarding these deals, secrecy so complete that city attorneys have instructed town councillors to refuse to answer questions about it during public meetings.

Data-centers consume massive amounts of electricity and water, and so companies are always on the hunt for low costs for these necessities. Sometimes, those savings come from geography -- siting a data-center by a river or lake, or in a cooler climate -- but they can also come from sweetheart deals from local power and water companies.

The Partnership for Working Families has been fighting for transparency on these deals since Google's first wave of data-center buildouts in San Jose in 2006. They recently filed public records requests in eight cities where Google has built or is building data-center and seven cities with Google offices.

The records reveal a pattern of extreme secrecy: Google uses special-purpose, anonymous LLCs to do its deals, sometimes using multiple LLCs for different parts of the deal (for example, one LLC might acquire the land, and another might develop it).

Google binds the cities it deals with to vows of silence, through extensive nondisclosure agreements. The agreements prohibit cities from revealing Google's power and water usage, payroll data, and investment level. Google argues that these are trade secrets that might reveal sensitive competitive data, but this is also the information that voters need in order to assess whether they are getting value for money when they hand over millions to one of the world's largest, most profitable companies. Read the rest