In March, Google bought The Warsaw HUB office complex from European real estate firm Ghelamco in a $700 million deal, the largest single office transaction in the history of the Polish and CEE market so far.

The Warsaw Hub, situated at the Rondo Daszyńskiego in central Warsaw, comprises three buildings: two 130-meter-high towers with 75,000 sqm of office space and a hotel building. The hotel section will be still owned by Ghelamco, while office towers now belong to Google.

Google has been present in Poland for more than 15 years, growing from a small office room to a space for more than 1,000 employees. The company moved into The Warsaw Hub in the Wola district as a tenant last year, opening there a new office – a working space for teams involved primarily in cloud services, an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

In 2021, the company launched Polish Google Cloud Region — a $2 billion data hub — that became the first such investment not only in Poland but in CEE, according to Magdalena Kotlarczyk, country director, Google Poland.

Today, the Google office in Warsaw is the largest Google Cloud Technology development center in Europe, serving global customers, such as Spotify, Snapchat and Twitter. After the acquisition of The Warsaw Hub complex, Google has space for 2,500 employees, with potential for further expansion, the company said.

Google expansion in Poland comes at times when investors are concerned about the country’s economy as the war in Ukraine is expected to hit exports, create supply-chain disruptions and further accelerate inflation, which is already at record-high levels.

“As we continue to invest not only in infrastructure but also in talent and knowledge, we are confident that Google can continue helping Poland’s economy use its advantages and the power of technology to support its future economic growth,” Kotlarczyk said in a statement.

Mark Brzezinski, the US ambassador to Poland, praised the investment on Twitter, saying he was glad that US companies appreciate Poland and make use of its potential.

The tech capital

Warsaw’s attractiveness to international investors is fueled by the growth of the business services industry, access to an educated workforce with knowledge of foreign languages, especially in the IT sector and relatively low labor costs.

“The main investment criterion is invariably the remuneration of employees – the minimum wages oscillate at a level similar to that of our southern neighbors,” said Iwo Paliszewski, CEE marketing & employer branding manager at Antal. “However, if we plan to attract qualified workers, we must be prepared to pay salaries not much lower than those offered in the West,” he added.

Google rival Microsoft, which has its own cloud service, announced a $1 billion digital investment plan in 2020 in Poland, which includes its first data center in the region. The company signed a strategic partnership with Chmura Krajowa (National Cloud), an organization established to accelerate the digitalization of businesses and public administration.

“Poland has the opportunity to be the digital heart of Europe,” said Mark Loughran, general manager, Microsoft Poland.

Google, which opened its first office in Poland in 2006, calls Warsaw its regional hub for both engineering and business and one of the fastest-growing sites in the EMEA region. In 2015, it opened Campus Warsaw, a place where startups can access workspaces, events and a community of entrepreneurs. The project, created as a business incubator, is now open as temporary office space for Ukrainian start-ups, mostly run by women.

“Ukraine has a strong and vibrant startup community. Of the roughly 2,000 startups in Ukraine, 126 startups have raised venture capital funding since the beginning of 2021,” Agnieszka Hryniewicz-Bieniek, global director, Google for Startups, wrote.

In March, the company announced a $5 million Google for Startups Ukraine Support Fund to allocate cash awards throughout 2022. Selected Ukraine-based startups will receive up to $100,000 in funding and Google mentorship. In addition, Google allocated $10 million to local organizations helping asylum seekers who arrive in Poland.

Cloud services on the rise 

Google has invested billions of dollars in cloud services in Poland as the cloud computing market is expected to grow by 15-20% annually, according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates. Apart from Google, the main global players include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud. The key driver for the market is cost benefits compared to conventional physical storage.

Dan Decasper, head of the Google Cloud engineering center in Warsaw, who was appointed in March 2021, called the expansion of the Warsaw office a priority. “Many of our most important products and technologies are developed here, which are used by the world's largest customers of Google Cloud,” he said.

Google Cloud Region allows quicker data transmissions for Polish companies and institutions, the possibility of conducting real-time data analytics and faster back-ups, according to National Cloud. The Region offers a portfolio of key Google products, including Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Spanner and BigQuery.

Apart from Warsaw, Google has a center in Wrocław in an office complex on Bema Square. In March 2021, the company established there a team involved in the implementation of cloud technologies for customers from Europe.