Re: Timing….
"One of thee major issues they ran on was stopping this DC from being built.
"Meta's money is no good in Zeewolde and the Zuck can f-off."
Well, it looks more that Zucks money was well received in Zeewolde, but that central government got a bit uneasy about it. Dutch press has been reporting on this issue for quite some time, going a couple of years back. A rather "embarrassing" issue there was/ is that there were indications that (local) dignitaries were very positive to the DC coming their way due to "various convincing reasons", and central government trying to stop it. The latter was rather difficult though, since the Dutch governing structure and law gives local council significant free reign there. Continuous point of dispute is the cost/ gain discussion, where the local dignitaries at that time presented "independent research" that turned out to come straight out of the FB offices. In the end, as is in the El Reg piece, local elections removed the local council who was in favour, thus barring the plans further.
Google had a similar plans for 3 large DCs in the Netherlands, was also "facilitated" massively by local council where they wanted to go, but in the end backed out due to "unknown reasons". Both cases show a very interesting picture of "good" Dutch politics.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
