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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Microsoft opens data center in Quincy

The Spokesman-Review

Microsoft Corp. on Monday opened the doors of a massive data center in central Washington, turning what was once a bean farm into a “server farm.”

The data center, based in Quincy, Wash., is about 474,000 square feet and is surrounded on three sides by fields of potatoes, beans and broccoli. An undisclosed number of servers inside are now online, handling Internet traffic to Microsoft’s Hotmail e-mail program, instant messaging and other tools.

The server farm is the first of six Microsoft has planned for Quincy; construction of No. 2 is under way, but beyond that, growth will be “tied to adoption of online services,” said Michael Manos, a senior director of data center services at Microsoft.

•Shares of Amazon.com Inc. rose to their highest point in a year Monday, after an analyst said the company’s hefty technology spending may soon pay off.

Amazon also announced it would ship the last book in the wildly popular Harry Potter series to land on eager readers’ doorsteps the first day it’s also available in stores.

Amazon’s stock rose $2.79, or 6.6 percent, to end the day at $45.20 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Earlier in the day, shares traded as high as $45.27, surpassing a 52-week high of $43.25.

Allstate Insurance Co. must pay a Louisiana man who lost his home to Hurricane Katrina more than $2.8 million in damages and penalties, a federal jury decided Monday in a case that hinged largely on whether it was wind or storm surge that wiped out his house.

Allstate spokeswoman Kate Hollcraft said the company will appeal.

Allstate claimed most of the damage was due to storm surge, an event not covered in its policy.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. dethroned Exxon Mobil Corp. to win back first place on the 2007 Fortune 500 list after a confluence of economic forces led American companies to their most profitable year in the compilation’s 53-year history.

The big retailer posted a more than 11 percent increase in revenue to $351.1 billion and profits of $11.3 billion, according to the magazine’s annual ranking of the nation’s largest companies.

The discounter has topped the list five out of the past six years.

Fortune compiled the rankings based on companies’ 2006 revenues.

Nipping at Wal-Mart’s heels was 2006 title-holder Exxon Mobil, which had $347.3 billion in revenue and the highest profit in history by a U.S. company, reaching $39.5 billion.