Google Milan data center, Milan, Lombardy

Google's Milan data center capacity is its Google Cloud region europe-west8 in Milan, in the Lombardy region of Italy, which Google opened in June 2022 as the first of two Italian cloud regions. It was built with Telecom Italia (TIM), whose data centers host it. At the launch, TIM's Elio Schiavo said "our network of data centers, designed and built according to eco-sustainability criteria, will allow significant CO2 savings."

The region launched with three cloud zones, and Google said a second Italian region would follow in Turin. Google cited a University of Turin economic impact report finding that the two regions could generate up to €3.3 billion and support up to 65,000 new jobs in Piedmont and Lombardy. "This new region is a strong step towards building regional capacity that meets the needs of the Italian digital economy, from availability and data residency, to digital sovereignty and sustainability," said Fabio Fregi, Google Cloud's country manager for Italy. In July 2026 Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's largest banking group, said it had finished moving a fundamental part of its core IT systems onto the Milan and Turin regions, migrating more than 800 applications.

Lombardy has since become the first Italian region with its own law on data centers. The regional council's law, reported by GreenPlanner in June 2026, raises urbanization fees by up to 200% for data centers built on green or farm land, requires new data centers to use only renewable energy, and bans drawing water from public aqueducts for cooling. It cuts construction fees by 10 to 30% and speeds permits for data centers on disused industrial land, and gives municipalities a year to update their plans and map such brownfield sites. About half of the roughly 30-gigawatt pipeline of data center requests across Italy is concentrated in Lombardy, according to regional assessor Sertori.

A steering group of the Lombardy Region, ANCI Lombardia, the environmental agency ARPA, universities and the provinces will oversee how the law is applied.