Matt Brittin, the man in charge of managing Google’s operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, has resigned after ten years in the role.
TakeAway Points:
- The man charged with overseeing Google’s operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia has stepped down after a decade in post.
- Brittin said he would continue running Google’s EMEA operations until a successor had been chosen.
- According to filings submitted with regulators on Thursday, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and other businesses have suggested an alternate system for how data centres in Ohio pay for power.
EMEA manager to leave company
Brittin first joined the tech giant as head of UK and Ireland operations in 2007, before rising through the ranks to become vice president of northern and central Europe, and then EMEA president in 2014.
Prior to his time at Google, Brittin spent several years working as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., as well as a stint as commercial director at Trinity Mirror, later rebranded as Reach PLC.
In a post announcing his departure on social media platform LinkedIn, Brittin praised colleagues whose AI advances this week won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, and shared advice one of Google’s co-founders gave him when he arrived at the company.
“When I joined Google in January 2007, Larry Page advised me to ‘put the best people you can on important work, and get out of the way.’ It’s been the privilege of my life to try to honour this – working with brilliant teams to help build tech that makes the world better,” he wrote.
Brittin said he would continue running Google’s EMEA operations until a successor had been chosen.
Big Tech proposes power-rate terms in Ohio data-center fight
Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, along with other companies, have proposed an alternative framework for how data centers pay for power in Ohio, according to documents filed with regulators on Thursday.
The companies had been fighting a proposal brought by utility AEP Ohio in May that would require data centers and cryptocurrency miners to provide pre-payments and other financial assurances for their massive energy needs. AEP said at the time it was overloaded with requests from those two groups.
A growing number of U.S. states are receiving an influx of power demand from data centers as Big Tech rushes to acquire large amounts of electricity to expand technology such as generative AI.
The Ohio dispute is among the regulatory battles underway that may set precedents for how the U.S. power industry will manage the fast-moving expansion of data centers and who will pay to accommodate their demand.
The explosion in power requests prompted AEP Ohio this year to pause new contracts for data centers, the company said when it filed for the tariffs.
Big Tech, power companies, including Constellation Energy and One Energy Enterprises, along with others, later opposed AEP.
Some of those companies have now offered to settle the case by laying out their own set of rules before regulators. Those terms include broadening the range of customers that would fall under AEP’s rules to include any industry with loads of more than 50 megawatts at a single location. The proposal also changes the circumstances under which big new power customers must pay for costs such as transmission upgrades.
