Has Google Acquired Indonesia's IDC? [Update: No]
Ronald Ishak, founder of Domikado, just tweeted that Google has acquired IDC, Indonesia's largest and most spread out data center company. He says that he is fairly confident about it. If it's true, it will have wide ranging ramifications across the entire industry in Indonesia, not to mention Google saving itself the trouble of having to set up its own data center to comply with the information and electronic transaction law which was passed in 2008.
The data center was the one which took down almost all of Indonesia's Internet when one of its servers caught fire last year. The company handles the majority of Internet traffic in Indonesia and hosts among others, websites for Detik and Garuda Indonesia.
[Update 1] Speaking to Dondy Bappedyanto, general manager of cloud computing solution provider Infinys Systems, he believes that such a deal wouldn't happen due to the sensitive nature of the factors involved in pulling off this deal. There is also the security issues that need to be dealt with given that IDC is crucial to the handling of Internet connectivity across the entire country.
We've made an enquiry to the principal of IDC, Johar Alam Rangkuti, and will report further updates on this rumor.
[Update 2] We've received word from a more informed source that there is no deal. At least not yet. The source would not comment whether there was an offer from Google to IDC but at this point, IDC remains an independent data center.