Google buys plot near Apple's planned Danish data center

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Google said it has bought a plot of land in southern Denmark adjacent to a planned Apple Inc data center to make sure it has the option of building one there too.

Apple said in July it would spend around $950 million to build a center with a planned opening in 2019. If Google follows suit it would make the area one of the world's largest data center hubs, the local municipality Aabenraa said.

"This is great news," Denmark's energy minister Lars Christian Lilleholt told Reuters on Friday.

"It signals that Google has plans in Denmark, and I think it's because we have some of Europe's lowest power prices for companies, some of the greenest energy, and a high security of supply," he said in a telephone interview.

Facebook in January announced plans to build a data center in Odense in central Denmark, its third outside of the United States.

Besides its new 131 hectare (324 acres) plot in Aabenraa Google also owns a 73 plot in Fredericia, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Aabenraa.

Google has no plans for the lots yet, but wanted to secure the possibility to expand its data centers in Europe if required, a spokeswoman told Reuters.

($1 = 6.3073 Danish crowns)

(Reporting by Teis Jensen; editing by Alexander Smith)