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In April 2017, The New York Times said it planned to close three leased data-center sites and move most of their workloads to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS). It did not plan to eliminate every physical facility: the Times Square site was expected to remain for video editing, network equipment, and applications considered difficult to move. The plan was still underway when NYT engineers spoke about it later; the available reporting does not confirm whether the closures or migration were completed.
What The New York Times announced in 2017
Data Center Knowledge reported on April 18, 2017, that Nick Rockwell, then the New York Times’ chief technology officer, described a plan to shut three of the four data centers hosting content and internal applications. NYT had leased equipment space in Newark, Boston, and Seattle, alongside an internal facility in its Times Square building. The plan was to close the three leased sites while retaining the New York facility for selected infrastructure and applications. Data Center Knowledge’s report characterized the effort as infrastructure modernization; Rockwell described the existing backend as a “jumbled mess.” That was his assessment at the time, not a statement about NYT’s infrastructure today.
“Replace data centers” therefore describes the direction of the 2017 plan, not a promise to remove every physical system. The stated goal was to move most workloads off the leased sites and keep some functions in Manhattan.
Which workloads were planned for AWS and Google Cloud?
The reported provider split was based partly on application requirements, rather than an assertion that one provider was universally better. The following were planned placements, not a confirmed inventory of what ultimately ran where.
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| Workload or need | Reported 2017 plan |
|---|---|
| Applications dependent on Oracle databases | AWS |
| Most other applications | Containers on GCP, orchestrated with Kubernetes |
| Some packaged enterprise IT applications that preferred virtual machines | Expected to remain on AWS |
| Video editing, network equipment, and older applications considered hard to move | Retain at the Times Square facility |
NYT already used an AWS virtual private cloud and other Amazon services, and had some applications in Google Cloud before the plan. The announcement was therefore an expansion and reorganization of cloud use, not a move from no cloud presence at all.
What NYT engineers said about the migration
In a later Google Cloud Platform Podcast interview, NYT engineering director Deep Kapadia said the migration was not finished and was slated to finish in the second quarter of 2018. His words were: “So no, we haven’t finished the migration yet. We are slated to finish it in the second quarter of 2018.” That was a target stated during the transition, not evidence that it was met.
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Kapadia described a mix of migration approaches. Some applications could move with little replatforming; others could be adapted to managed services or containers. He said App Engine suited some applications, while Google Kubernetes Engine—called Google Container Engine in the interview transcript—offered a way to deploy containers without operating Kubernetes directly. The data team’s positive experience with BigQuery was one early reason to evaluate Google’s managed cloud services. Some workloads remained in AWS, and Kapadia discussed Kubernetes and Terraform as tools supporting portable or shared operations across providers.
He also described a shift in the infrastructure group’s emphasis toward automation and tooling that helped product teams move faster, saying the team wanted to be “building more applications and less infrastructure.” Those comments reflect the NYT engineers’ choices and priorities during this migration; they are not a universal cloud-migration formula or a current comparison of provider products.
Breaking-news delivery and the reported cost estimate
The 2017 report also described the delivery architecture around a push-notification API. Rockwell said it sent 25 million to 30 million notifications per minute during breaking news. Data Center Knowledge reported that AWS support for the service then cost about $25,000 per month. Rockwell expected a planned GCP-plus-Fastly setup to bring that figure to about $5,000 per month. These were 2017 reported figures and an estimate, not audited results; the reporting does not establish that the change achieved the projected reduction.
Fastly’s content delivery network cached content at edge data centers. The report said that caching was expected to reduce the infrastructure NYT needed to deploy. This part of the plan illustrates that the proposal involved more than shifting application servers between cloud vendors: content delivery and the amount of infrastructure needed to handle traffic were also considerations.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Did The New York Times close the data centers?
The sources cited here do not establish whether NYT completed the migration, closed Newark, Boston, and Seattle, or later changed its cloud architecture. The podcast interview confirms only that the work remained in progress when Kapadia spoke and that the target was Q2 2018. The 2017 announcement and its projected savings should not be treated as proof of the eventual outcome or as a description of NYT’s current infrastructure.
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