So, recession is here making local and global companies alike feel the heat. Changes in consumer behaviour affects especially the global tech companies very quickly because of the way they have almost completely gobbled up all marketing spending of every seller and reseller with any digital outlet presence.
As the digital advertising chain is decoupled from anything physical this ripples from consumer spending to impacting big tech revenue with immense speed. This, of course will affect how these companies use their resources, and the workforce needed to run their businesses.
To try to quantify what is happening to global tech companies’ workforce, I’ve collected some numbers and below is a chart illustrating the announced lay-offs in nine prominent big tech companies as of 2023-01-20. On this day, Google announced their reduction of 12’000 “roles” which triggered me to look into this.
Note some trends;
Download spread sheet in ODS format
2020-11-25 add news item about cable extension to Copenhagen, add Bulk data center blog link 2019-06-04 add details of Bulk data center in Esbjerg and infrastructure, add local news items about construction start 2019-05-08 add system summary from FCC application, elaborate on landing point discrepancies between FCC/cablemap, link to docs describing seg. 5 cable lay schedule 2019-03-06 fix links to submarinecablemap.com and some press, add info from TE Subcom experience doc., some general touch ups 2019-01-22 change “Danish Press Coverage” to “National Press”, add “International Press”, add some National about datacenter prospects & International Press items about contractors choosen 2018-10-05 initial commit
Europe, Denmark and my local neighbourhood of Western Jutland is going to get its connectivity boosted by the Havfrue transatlantic cable system being built by a consortium consisting of Google, Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure. To quote the announcement done by Google;
To increase capacity and resiliency in our North Atlantic systems, we’re working with Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure to build a direct submarine cable system connecting the U.S. to Denmark and Ireland. This cable, called Havfrue (Danish for “mermaid”), will be built by TE SubCom and is expected to come online by the end of 2019. Google blog post, 2018-01-16
Digging into the details first reveals the projected trench as illustrated in below by some of the stakeholders;
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by cloud.google.com.
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by TE SubCom.
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by submarinecablemap.com.
EDIT 2020-11-25: Additionally in 2019-06-21 Interxion announced a direct connection between the AEC2 landing site in Blaabjerg to its two datacenters in Ballerup/Copenhagen.
More digging into the Danish parts reveals that most sources mention Blåbjerg (Blaabjerg) as the Danish landing point for Havfrue (just as TAT-14), although ComputerWorld DK (see National Press below) relays the information that it will land at Endrup (where COBRAcable is terminated). However, a FCC application dated 2018-05-25 SCL-00214S (pdf) refers to it as the “Havfrue system” and specifically states that a new cable landing station will be constructed in Blaabjerg (as well as in Leckanvy, Ireland and Kristiansand, Norway);
The Havfrue system will consist of three segments. (1) The Main Trunk will connect the existing cable landing station at Wall, New Jersey with a new cable landing station to be constructed at Blaabjerg, Denmark. (2) The Ireland Branch will connect a new cable landing station to be constructed at Old Head Beach, Leckanvy, Ireland with a branching unit on the Main Trunk. (3) The Norway Branch will connect a new cable landing station at Kristiansand, Norway with a branching unit on the Main Trunk.
Google is currently also projecting its own private subsea cables, some of the rationale behind their mixed private/consortium/lease approach are disclosed in blog post from 2018-07-17 announcing the Dunant cable, which is the first Google private transatlantic subsea cable projected to connect Virginia Beach and France.
EDIT 2020-11-25: see blog post detailing my visit to the construction site in June 2019
Bulk has announced that the Esbjerg data center location will be referred to as DK01 Campus which is described on the about page (EDIT 2020-11-25: now has its own page with different wording) as follows:
Bulk’s DK01 Campus, Esbjerg, southwest Denmark, will be a scalable Carrier Neutral Colocation data center ready for customers Q4 2019. Esbjerg is becoming a highly strategic data center location with several subsea fiber systems terminating within or nearby. These include Havfrue (US, Ireland, Norway, Denmark), Havhingsten (Ireland, Denmark), Cobra (Holland, Denmark), Skagerrak 4 (Norway Denmark), DANICE (Iceland, Denmark) and TAT-14 (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark). Combined with excellent terrestrial connectivity, this will make Esbjerg the main international entry point to the Nordics and enable the Bulk DK01 campus to be the natural traffic exchange point.
An article (translated) in the local newspaper JydskeVestkysten first revealed the exact location of the center and renderings of its visual appearence and construction. The location is in Kjersing industrial area North of Esbjerg.
A further map of the Bulk connections between Norway, Denmark and Ireland has been revealed in an article of Capacitymedia and on Bulk’s own fiber networks page. Also a partnership with Amazon about delivering both connectivity and datacenter infrastructure for AWS has been announced.
When dealing with policy enforcement for products that you distribute from business partners and whose sales your organization directly profits from, you’d think that you’d want to engage in some kind of communication with your peers before making drastic moves like shutting down distribution of these products. Especially when your peer is a national lottery organization partly owned by a European state, who is strictly professional about their business and which probably has a non-significant turnover facilitated by the product.
Well, if your are Google and runs the Google Play software distribution system for the Android platform, you apparently couldn’t care less. At least that is what a move today by Google implies, when banning an Android gaming app by Danske Spil, the national Danish lottery, who has a governement enforced monopoly on lottery in Denmark. This was done without any interaction with Danske Spil which of course was taken by surprise when realizing this, as reported (GTrans) by Danish tech magazine Version2.
Admittedly, as it stands now from an objective point of view, the app clearly breaks the content policy of Google Play which states that “We don’t allow content or services that facilitate online gambling”. So the real question, apart from the peculiar behaviour of Google towards this app provider for Google Play, is for Danske Spil; “How on earth did you think you could distribute an app through Google Play which so blatantly is in direct violation of the content policy?”.
Maybe the endorsement by the Danish legislation has risen to their heads, making them think their monoploy in Denmark made them so special that they could ignore Google’s standard policies? The current response from Danske Spil is that the app had been previously “approved” by Google, whatever that means because to my knowledge there is no verification procedure as such for content on Google Play (that’s a point for further investigation when time permits) .
At the moment not only the app itself, but also the provider page for Danske Spil A/S is inaccessible at Google Play, even though marketing from Danske Spil still tries to lure new users to the lotteries provided by the app, both from the web, TV and electronic billboards.
If your business model relies on outside partners (and which doesn’t?), this might be a good occasion to take the time for a second thought about what dependencies it has. And especially who is in the power to pull the carpet below it without interacting with you.
If I had a business with parts, components or services not under my in complete control, I’d prefer a partner which had a fellow human representing him, with which I could meet and look into his eyes. That way a social bond is created, which hopefully increases the probability that I will know if anything is about to happen that affects my business.
Just saw the Google Street View car driving by at my daily whereabouts in Esbjerg, Denmark. Did get a little exhilerated and spilled some coffee in excitement and attempt to wave at the cameras (Hi mom!!) . Here’s a shot of the car taken by itself when passing my home at it’s last visit in 2009.
Apparently Google Streetview has started collecting data again here i Denmark, as they did in Norway, Sweden, Ireland and South Africa in July. Now with the Wi-Fi privacy issue resolved.
The following netfrenzy brought me to the official schedule at http://www.google.dk/help/maps/streetview/where-is-street-view.html which shows some mid to large sized cities in Denmark beeing up for an update, including Esbjerg. Strangely I haven’t noticed any lack of imagery in my local area. I know that most of Denmark was beeing photographed during July and August 2009, so something must be missing, or of inferior quality since they are coming back.
I also found a fun Street View Partner site; Legoland in California has allowed Street View to take a tour through the park. Fun for me, because the Lego Group HQ and original Legoland Billund is close to Esbjerg, and I have been going there regularly wiht the kids. Going to be fun to take them for a virtual walk in the park in California ;). The Billund park doesn’t seem to have been mapped internally, though.
Also a hilarious joke on Google Streetview from an interesting group of people; The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab. Will be digging these nutty people out for sure.
