Lincoln data center "comes online" in 2026 (info from Google). These are early, non-mature operating numbers. I'm disappointed this wasn't made more clear in the story and, of course, most of the comments here don't understand the context.

Transparency is not the same thing as honesty.

Companies might want to avoid this being used as a side channel to infer the amount of their compute.

Companies might want to avoid setting a precedent where activists can demand such information.

Companies might want to avoid the effort of publishing this data, or the risk of publishing incorrect data.

You're assuming they're hiding the numbers because they think they seem bad in the discussions about data centers using too much water. The cover up is likely motivated much differently, and I would bet that doesn't really care about people complaining about waiter usage.

I don't understand your question. I'm commenting on the figures we know from this report. I don't have to work out the motives behind them to evaluate whether they're material (they are not).

Google prints the water usage of each of their sites in their annual report. What other industry is more transparent about water usage?

Because the marketing teams don't do numbers and it's a high risk strategy

They are, and people just accuse them of lying!

Facts & reason do nothing to a moral panic.