Report: Amazon halts work on Oregon data center complex

Amazon.com appeared to be making a big addition to its internet infrastructure last fall, when The Oregonian reported that a huge data center linked to the ecommerce giant was under construction in eastern Oregon near the Columbia River. Now comes word that the project has "quietly come to a halt," according to a new report from InformationWeek, which visited the site. Local officials cited economic conditions as the reason for the delay.

Amazon is one of a number of tech giants that have come to the Columbia River area for data centers, drawn by the cheap land and hydroelectric power. Google is building a data center facility in The Dalles, Ore. Microsoft and Yahoo, which set up shop on the Washington side of the border, have been re-evaluating their plans, however, after the state determined they do not qualify for a sales tax deferral program. Microsoft recently announced it is shifting some of its Azure cloud computing platform away from its data center in Grant County, Wash.

Amazon confirmed with InformationWeek that Vadata, the company that owns the Oregon data center, is a "legal entity" of Amazon, clearing up some of the confusion that accompanied the original story last fall. But Amazon offered very little detail beyond that. InformationWeek, citing local officials, said the project is on hold "until sometime next year." Data centers are a critical piece of infrastructure for Amazon, which needs massive data storage and computing capacity to power its ecommerce operations, Kindle electronic books, and cloud computing services.

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About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

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