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looorg [soylentnews.org] writes:

Finland is angry at Google over illegal deforestation. Chopping down about 400 000 trees to make room for two data centers. The construction has been halted.

In addition to the 250,000 trees felled at Muhos, Annala estimates that an additional 150,000 trees were felled at Otanmäki. Because the trees have been felled illegally, she says wood from the two sites cannot be sold to wood-processing plants.

She said the system depended a lot on trust, which she believes Google took advantage of. “They bought the vast land area and they just started to cut it, just like that,” she said. “It’s pure arrogance and it’s amazing.”

Google apologized and said it acted based on its understanding of Finnish law at the time.

Google said it was working to protect water quality at the Muhos site, and that it planned to plant trees across 130 hectares there. Conservationists say that figure is too low to have any real impact in comparison to the damage done by the tree felling.

We so sorry. Promise it won't happen again, until next time. I know Finnish is hard. But don't Google offer a tool to translate it to something they can read and understand?

Jussi Kangasharju, head of computer science at the University of Helsinki, said that while datacentres brought a limited number of jobs, potentially boosting the local economy, the benefits on a national level were minimal. “Really, for Finland, there are no benefits,” he said. “They are international companies serving international customers. Very little corporate taxes go to Finland. Datacentres ultimately have very little benefit for others except the datacentre operator.”

No benefit.

I guess the next US export is finally here. Hating Data center buildings. All them trees gone is not going to help when the electricity bill comes ...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/oct/22/finland-google-felling-trees-datacentre [theguardian.com]
https://cybernews.com/news/google-finland-data-center-trees/ [cybernews.com]

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