Google plans to establish a data center in Israel for its Google Cloud Platform, it has been reported.

Israeli publication Haaretz claimed Google is “negotiating with a number of operators of server farms in Israel,” and may have already signed a contract with one of them in order to set up a GCP region in the country.

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– Google

Oracle was first

Haaretz’s report did not provide any more details around location or size of the data center, other than the cost could run into the ‘hundreds of millions of dollars.’ Google has made no announcements on the matter.

Google has another large project in the works in and around Israel. The search giant is working on the Blue-Ramen subsea cable system which would link India to Italy via Israel.

Oracle recently opened an Israeli cloud region in Jerusalem, while Amazon and Microsoft are both in the process of opening AWS and Azure regions in the country later in the year.

The Israeli Government is undergoing a large-scale cloud transformation under the moniker Nimbus Project, which will see large-scale procurement of cloud infrastructure and services to host and deliver Government information & applications.