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Microsoft

Microsoft Cancels $1 Billion Ohio Data Center Projects (datacenterdynamics.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
Microsoft has scrapped plans to build three data center campuses in Licking County, Ohio, in a $1 billion investment pullback, the company said. The canceled developments in New Albany, Heath, and Hebron join a growing list of Microsoft data center project cancellations across the United States, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the United Kingdom.

Microsoft will retain ownership of the land and plans to eventually develop the sites at an unspecified future date. Two properties will remain available for farming in the interim.

Microsoft Cancels $1 Billion Ohio Data Center Projects More | Reply

Microsoft Cancels $1 Billion Ohio Data Center Projects

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  • Datacenters are being built world-round and year round. They are drive by REAL needs and fake ("AI") needs.

    Microsoft lacks leadership and this is the result.

    Don't blame the tariffs (yeah, Trump sucks) or the regulations (yeah the EU sucks). Just look at the ONE COMPANY THAT CAN'T COMPETE.

    Microsoft sucks. And why? Because it lacks leadserhip. As it celebrates its 50th anniversary, we see they have produced NOTHING in 20 years.

    Redmond - you have a new upcoming vacuum to fill.

    • microsoft produced two enshitified versions of windows operating systems

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      As [MS] celebrates its 50th anniversary, we see they have produced NOTHING in 20 years.

      Good! Keep it that way! They should instead focus on fixing their glitches. Leave finding new tech to naive caffeinated snotnoses who don't mind bellying up if they get it wrong.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ZombieCatInABox ( 5665338 )

      Microsoft is the largest company in the world, by market capitalization. Bigger than Apple, NVIDIA, and Amazon. That's certainly the sign of a company that lacks leadership. /s

      we see they have produced NOTHING in 20 years

      They have produced value for their shareholders, which is all that matters to a corporation.

      Reality doesn't care about your hatred for Microsoft.

    • Re:MICROSOFT IS LEADERLESS (Score:5, Informative)

      by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2025 @09:12PM (#65291115)
      This is a ridiculously false assertion, so why say this?

      they have produced NOTHING in 20 years

      In the last 20 years Microsoft went from 0 market share in cloud services to 25% of the world. Amazon is holding at 33% and every year Microsoft is a little closer to them. They left Google in the dust and Google had a serious head start.

      • Also, apparently the XBox ecosystem doesn't exist. That might come as news to a whole lot of video game enthusiasts.

        • Microsoft don't need Xbox anymore, they've been buying up the game studios instead, that's where the profit is.
          They even own Doom now.
          And World of Warcraft

          • No, the REAL profit is in the inordinate 30% app store fee for releasing an Xbox game... on every digital game! (Boxed works differently, but they get a kick back there, too). Just like any app store, the devs take the full financial risk and MSFT gets risk-free revenue. Now, the problem is they're a third place console. Nintendo and Sony are kicking their butt (and Steam on PC). A lot of devs aren't bothering with Microsoft releases anymore since not enough potential users. So they had to buy the gam

            • Xbox hardware sales are the lowest they've been in a decade.
              Xbox as a whole is the most profitable it's been, since they acquired Blizzard Activision, despite lower revenue.

              The Xbox console is dying, it's failed to compete with Playstation in the high end and Nintendo in the low end.

              Microsoft has pivoted to buying franchises with massive subscription revenue.
              They're adding their new acquisitions to their existing Game Pass subscription service, which also works for PC games.
              They're currently trying to buy p

    • Or the original plans were just to fuel hype for AI, to boost their partner OpenAI, which they've already invested 13 billion in for a 49% stake

  • with these tariffs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2025 @08:18PM (#65291025)
    i bet new PCs & laptops with windows are going to get much more expensive, making keeping that old hardware more attractive and linux might come in handy for a lot of people that can not upgrade to win11

  • Behold the AI boom! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2025 @08:25PM (#65291033)

    The hype of AI is like a shaken soda: very little substance and it's leaving a big mess to clean up.

    "Nobody could have predicted this outcome." -- every rube that got fleeced by someone hyping AI

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 )

      The hype of AI is like a shaken soda: very little substance and it's leaving a big mess to clean up.

      That is factually untrue. LLMs are making a lot of people more efficient, with predictable supply-and-demand results.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by arcade ( 16638 )

      AI certainly have a LOT of substance, and the hype around it is awesome for the development of it. It means lots and lots of investment and new tech is being invented. It means things are getting cheaper and cheaper. It means things are getting more and more efficient.

      It might not seem that way, as it requires more and more GPU power, more and more electricity etc .. but after deepseek was released, and other models will be released over the next year; affordable AI is here in that smaller companies can

  • Promises, Promises (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2025 @08:36PM (#65291055)
    Companies love to make big announcements. They love to announce all sorts of big projects. They love to say that they are going to spend eleventy gazillion dollars next year.

    And then ..... nothing. Crickets.
    • Common strategy among politicians as well. "We will give $100 million in aid to XXX country after their disaster" then give them nothing.
    • Now that the election is over there is no need to spend money in an important electoral state.

  • Not a big deal (Score:5, Funny)

    by VampireByte ( 447578 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2025 @08:39PM (#65291061) Homepage

    Ohio can just use regedit to bring the projects back.

    • This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs.

      • LOL! Has anyone, ever, successfully "restored" the registry using this method? I'll admit, I've never tried. But then again, I've never heard of someone actually doing it either. Reverting Restore Points has worked for me before, but that's a whole different method.

  • With the instability and uncertainty about material and labor costs and availability due to the actions of the current regime, the risk-benefit ratio can't be calculated with any certainty.

    It's not a good time to make any large investments in my opinion. Hold your cash and real estate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      While generally a valid point, I think this was probably already planned before the tariffs were announced.

      • Microsoft announced in January that they would be building $80 billion in new datacenters for 2025. By the end of February they were already announcing that that this was no longer the case and that they would actually be pulling back from that target and were actually canceling leases.

        Of all of the technology companies Microsoft is absolutely the worst at actually designing and building products. But they are very good at business.

    • Could be, but aren't data center projects being canceled in other nations as well?

  • Is the Great AI Bubble Poppage finally here? (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2025 @08:43PM (#65291069) Journal

    The PE ratio charts have been throbbing so long and so hard the fling has to end somewhere. (I you like reading that sentence, you might be a perv and/or lonely.)

  • "Two properties will remain available for farming" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2025 @09:36PM (#65291165) Homepage Journal

    Tax dodge. Keep it a farm and its taxed at farmland rates not "best use of the property" rates.

    I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a thing.

    • It's construction in Ohio, this is standard if it is a data center or a housing development. It was farmland, they bought it, and rented it out while they dealt with the permits and all the planning. Cancelling the project while retaining ownership in case they change their mind, they continue to rent the farm out. It's very normal to rent farmland out, too. It does have tax implications but it isn't like they called a grass lot a golf course or stuck some goats on it to call it a farm.

      • Different market than in the Pacific Northwest. Here, current owners retain possesion of the property. But they enter into an option agreement with the developer. At such time that the developer wants to build, they exercize the option and buy the land outright. In the meantime, the farmer (property owner) recieves annual payments.

        Less capital is tied up this way. The tax treatment of the option payments is different. And there is no public record of the contract. Useful when trying to assemble large holdi

  • Just move to the cloud (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trondheim ( 2012498 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2025 @10:42PM (#65291257)
    This is a wise decision. Data centers are expensive, and Microsoft would be better served just moving their stuff to the cloud. Oh, wait...
    • That's funny, but it does make me wonder if one day we might see a merger of the big hyperscalers. Competition is expensive, and no one at the government is regulating monopolies anymore. Would a combined AzureAWSoracle be able to jack up the prices, or would everyone just repatriate their workloads?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Not with Azure in there. Remember they got hacked by sheer incompetence twice already. The others will not want to merge with them.

  • Yes, farming for Soylent green .. with AI and robots taking all the jobs.

  • With the need for data centers going down, there is also the need going down to power them. How are companies like NuScale and TerraPower doing, whose SMRs were supposed to be required to run the data centers?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      They will be fine. They did not really have a product all along and the nuclear fanatics still gave them money.

  • Microsoft is also planning a data center in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. Are they trying to put the two communities against each other for the best tax breaks and handouts?

    • Could be, but since they're cancelling data center projects all over the world, as are other companies, I'd infer that this isn't the reason.

  • Farming should be good after all that hype BS being dumped on the ground about this project.

  • A datacenter is a large capital expenditure, if the hardware gets 2X more expensive, it may make a lot more sense to build in Mexico or Canada or even South America (north of Brazil for example), the latency is not a lot worse.

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