>generating profits for a small cabal of assholes in SV.

People say that, but users are the ones capturing most if not almost all of the profit.

You don't cut Anthropic a check every time a new user signs up on your platform. You pay them a small slice of the revenue that their models generate for you.

Like... the town where the Google datacenter goes gets like some paved bike road from Google who "takes care of the community". Price tag around the profits of less than an hour of the GPU time in that datacenter.

An article in Finnish: https://www.uusijuttu.fi/juttu/sCcu9YiY-mjF4UD1O-b66ec

You know those companies are publicly owned and big % of American public owns shares in them? Additionally Google employs some 100k people in US and almost as many in Europe. Those are mostly very good jobs as well.

The whole anti-datacenters sentiments is stupid but "profits go to a handful of Americans" is just pants of fire kind of take.

You reminded me of something. I heard in the Czech Republic when communism ended, the state owned industries became owned by the public. Every citizen received a share.

I wonder if we're going to need something similar when AI nukes the economy.

Oh the logging projects also get a LOT of attention. It's just that the current government is center-right / far right, and they just let the logging to continue no matter the sanctions from the EU.

There are a lot of people who are against this, and protest against this. Looking at the polls, seems that it will change in the next elections, like a lot.

Because the prime minister has been running a government that is disliked from all directions. Because the economy has been going down and hard. Because the unemployment rates are the highest in EU.

And now he can shake hands with Google executives in a public photo.

People still live in the old world that thinks that doing business with the American corporations is somehow beneficial, especially with data centers. But the country should focus on building their own data centers, providing GPUs for smaller companies and providing cheap DeepSeek for Europeans instead of giving access to Google.

>Request for source on illegality [...] I don't see where it says anyone is refuting that

the regulators are the ones refuting google's claims. the headline opens with: "Finland's regulator says the environmental review came too late"

and the second paragraph of the linked article says:

"Google was apparently so eager to build its new data center infrastructure in Finland that it began bulldozing large swaths of forest __before the required environmental review of the full plan was complete__."

typically, doing something before the environmental review gives you a notice to proceed is illegal.

Finland has a very well managed forest. When I was there I was amazed about how carefully they cleared trees compared with what I was used to see in southern Europe. They are very proud of their wood houses, that they export everywhere, so wood management has to be excellent if they pretend to keep the business going. To see a foreign company just zeroing a forest with no intention of doing it right must hurt.

According to https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/06/google-da..., they had to halt the construction because they failed to assess the environmental impact. The same article you say it doesn't refute that the leveling was illegal says that at least four areas that must be protected are now leveled. It sounds to me that Google is playing the card "it is done already, just fine us and let's move on" thanks to their deep pockets.

Most other illegal logging is not happening by trillion dollar companies. When a company with all the resources cheats, people get extra mad.

of course it does. do you think people are mad about clearing forests because it's Google doing it? no, Google is just the one that they just heard about this week. If it was someone else they'd be mad about that too, because it's anger based on principles. If Google had bulldozed a bunch of parking lots to make their data centers no one would care.

With the current admin the deforestation rates in Brazil are now the lowest they have been for decades. Unfortunately that will be over by next week probably :/

"My town put a dog park near the brook and now on top of the local chemical companies dumping waste, we have dog urine getting into the water. We need to ban dog parks."

When people call out recycling because recycling plants use hundreds of thousands of gallons a day to wash off used plastic bottles (which all that sludge goes right back into the system), or they set their AC to 78 because of the incredible energy drain of cooling rooms to 70, I'll take those people more seriously.

I find that most of their "valid concerns" are actually "confused misunderstandings of social panic"

When we slot in datacenters on any hierarchy of impact, the only thing, literally the only they top the charts in, is "Makes a headline people click on". Everything else they're way down the list on. The stats are correct, the masses are just panicking.

You've made a lot of weird accusations here. 300 hectares of forest being cleared doesn't gain importance because "Hype scale" data centers are important.

Is "Shovel Purchased for Data Center Construction" an important story? If I say it's not, is it because I find it necessary to dismiss the valid* concerns citizens have regarding data centers? Is it because I find it necessary to protect the beliefs of a corporation over the populace? Is it because I hold loads of secret anti-democratic views regarding people questioning the intentions of American Big Tech™?

[*] Annoying question-begging, please never do this about any subject.

idk where you live but vegetarianism is a hot topic in europe and in ecological circles, the problem is that you get borderline aggressed by meat eaters when you open your mouth about the topic.

Most people are too brainwashed to even start self reflecting about their meat consumption, everybody talk about data centers because we're spending 5x more on them since LLMs became the new messiah: https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8...

The other thread (these are all internal links to the same HN post):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50050097

>> Logging a few hundred hectares was not a problem. Google could have done that without additional permits, if their intention was to plant a new forest afterwards. Environmental impact assessment was only necessary, because they intended to replace the forest with something else.

>> The key question is whether Google can comply with the law after the fact. If they complete the assessment and the government finds nothing that would prevent the construction of the data centers, the project can go on. Maybe there will be some minor sanctions, as well as some delays, as they didn't do things properly the first time. And even if there is something that prevents construction, Google can still probably comply by planting a new forest.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50051670

>> Either way, you need to complete the EIA [environmental impact assessment]. It'd probably show that this was, indeed, a good location for a DC [data center]. Not doing the assessment before starting to chop down the trees is the problem here, not that the forest is particularly ecologically valuable.

>>> Finn here. Not really. You're allowed to log if you resow.

>>> So this seems to be a calculated move: When permits pass, prep is done. Worth paying minor fines for jumping the gun. Permits don't pass, just resow. That's a well informed expected value calculation.

>>> That's a bad calculation, if the risk model failed to account for a political scandal in a small country that's very proud of their tree plantations and deeply suspicious of megacaps [sic]. But even with that tail risk realizing the likely outcome is that permits pass and prep is done.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062379

>> I found a source [0] claiming that some areas that are important for biodiversity were first spared and then cut down, but this does not mean that they were old growth and the Muhos county official Mikko Kari states "[The areas] are not legally mandated to be protected."

---

The takeaway appears to be that LVV hasn't actually stated what they think the problem is, but they want to do an investigation, and that cutting down the trees poses no legal problems. At least, according to local regulators. If doing some earthwork between logging and sowing is a problem, there seems to be no mention of the fact anywhere, including in statements by the agency that wants to stop the development.

How is the article written in bad faith? Did you even read the title let alone the article?

The title: Google cleared 300 hectares of Finnish forest for a data center, and regulators want answers

The opening sentence: Finland's regulator says the environmental review came too late, Google says it followed the law

I'm going with option #1 here because the article represents both sides here equally and makes no claims that laws were broken, only that an investigation is underway. Point me to where it indicates #2 for you.

EDIT: It's not clear if you're simply pointing out OP's misgivings or stating yours in support. Either way, I would like to see evidence of scenario #2 if that's the contention here.

EDIT 2: the more I think to myself about this, the more silly it seems. This is from a website called techspot.com, they literally report on news regarding tech companies. So while it may not be "investigating deforestation" as you put it (which in itself is a ridiculous starting point and you know it), there's also no indication it's providing false news about Google just to bash on data centers.