us-west-1 is a great success. Just two weeks after its official launch its level of activity is 73% of eu-west-1, which has been around for a whole year!

http://www.jackofallclouds.com/2009/12/comparing-amazon-ec2-...

California is twice the area of Ireland AFAIK?

After officially announcing plans to build a data center in Prineville on Thursday, Facebook officials told The Bulletin that the tax incentive offered to the company through an enterprise zone was a key reason it came to Central Oregon. By locating its new data center in the zone, Facebook will be excused from paying as much as $2.8 million a year in local taxes.

http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100...

Seriously, 50bn SecondMarket cap company looking to save $2.8 million in taxes?

$2 million here, $3 million there, sooner or later it adds up to real money. A $50 billion company doesn't stay a $50 billion company by blowing $2.8 million on nothing.

Sadly, that's a lesson the California gov never learned. If they had, they might not be wasting similar amounts of money on pensions for criminals.

http://www.newsoxy.com/world/disgraced-sheriff-pension-13760...

We presently live in a system where states often times compete with each other to offer incentives to attract factories or other operations that employ a lot of people. These tax incentives are paid for by the people of the state, that is, by the workers. It's a perverse system. Maybe companies should be willing to pay their share of national defense, roads, etc.

There are structural problems with California governing system that give more plausible reasons for its present problems. To go from Facebook setting up a data center in order to save a few million dollars to an extreme pension abuse example is very weak.

1. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/06/opinion/la-oe-crane6...

sure, so now Oregon will loan additional $2.8M here and $3M there until it itself becomes the California and comes back to FB asking for money. Of course by then there will be plenty of bankrupt states (countries even?) willing to offer tax breaks to help wonderful companies like FB to relocate.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/287.html

This move is a win for Oregon. A small pieces of something is better than a big piece of nothing (which is all CA gets).

Anyway, this is getting offtopic since this $2.8M p.a. is breadcrumbs compared to what FB employees will be paying in tax to California and Washington after the liquidity event. And it's not like THEY'll be moving from Silicon Valley any time soon.

So no, Cali is still getting plenty of it.

1) Where can we get cheap power? 2) Of those locations, where can we save on taxes, building costs, labor, etc?

AFAIK there isn't anywhere in CA that qualifies for 1).