Too much information: Amsterdam hits pause on datacentre boom

The Intelligent Retail Lab is located in the Walmart Neighborhood Market, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, in Levittown, N.Y. Shoppers can see the massive data center where nine cooling towers, 100 servers and other computer equipment that process the 1.6 terra bytes of data per second that is coming from cameras, and other equipment. Walmart says this AI Lab in a store is the first of its kind in the industry. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Amsterdam reckons it has more datacentres than any other major city in the world, and that’s turned out to be too much of a good thing. 

The Dutch capital, which lured tech companies with attractive taxes and relatively cheap electricity, is halting the setting up of any more datacentres until the end of the year, saying the speed with which they’ve opened is putting an untenable strain on its property market and power networks.