MAM
Coca-Cola asks ‘American Idol” fans to join singer Taio Cruz for song
MUMBAI: In order to create interactivity for American Idol which airs on US broadcaster Fox, beverage conglomerate Coca-Cola has announced the Perfect Harmony collaboration. This invites fans of the show to help write a new song for it that will be performed during the show’s season finale on 25 May.
Fans can visit www.AmericanIdol.com where they can listen to the opening segment of a song penned by multiplatinum singer-songwriter Taio Cruz. Then the fans take it from there. Taio will start the song and write the beginning of each verse, but it’s up to fans to help finish each verse in time for him to perform the single on the final show. People can also get the latest updates on the programme by following the hashtag #perfectharmony on Twitter.
Ryan Seacrest, host of the show, said: “American Idol auditions are proof that many of our fans have a passion and desire to sing professionally. What we don’t get to explore on camera are the many talented songwriters that exist as well. Coca-Cola has created a very exciting and innovative programme that, for the first time, gives fans the opportunity to work with a top artist to create a new song that will be performed live in front of millions of people.”
Each week till 13 May people in the age group of 18+ will have the opportunity to submit lyrics for consideration for inclusion in the final composition. Following each of the four submission phases, Coca-Cola will select the top three lyrics and then fans, ages 13 and up, will be able to vote for their favorite. The lyrics with the most votes will then be incorporated into the song.
Cruz said, “Songwriting can be an individual journey or a cooperative effort, and I’ve done it both ways. But creating a new song, with the input of music fans and in partnership with Coca-Cola and American Idol? Now that takes the experience to a completely new place and I’m ready to get it started.”
Perfect Harmony is part of a new Cola-Cola music programme that offers teens the inside track to the latest in music through opportunities to express themselves and collaborate with popular artists.
Later this year, Coca-Cola will launch another teen music showcase with emphasis on Hispanic teens. People will be able to vote for an up-and-coming bilingual artist or band that will win the chance to perform with an established artist live onstage. The programme will kick off with a concert celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month in September.
Brands
Google secures AP discom licence to power $15bn Vizag AI hub
First-of-its-kind move gives tech giant grid control for massive 1GW campus
VISAKHAPATNAM: Google has secured a rare electricity distribution company licence in Andhra Pradesh, marking a decisive shift from being just a power consumer to becoming a power distributor for its upcoming mega data centre hub in Visakhapatnam.
The move effectively rewrites the rulebook for hyperscalers in India. Instead of relying on state utilities, Google will be able to procure electricity directly from generators, including its own renewable sources. This not only cuts out intermediaries but also gives the company tighter control over supply, reliability and long-term costs.
For a business where electricity can account for up to 60 per cent of operating expenses, the economics are hard to ignore. Even more critical is uptime. Data centres demand near-perfect reliability, and owning the distribution layer allows Google to manage outages and load balancing with far greater precision.
At the heart of the plan is a sprawling 1-gigawatt data centre ecosystem spread across more than 600 acres in three locations near Vizag. With an estimated investment of $15 billion over five years, the project is set to become India’s largest single foreign direct investment and Google’s biggest AI-focused facility outside the United States.
The campus is being designed with artificial intelligence workloads in mind, housing the company’s custom tensor processing units to power services such as Gemini, Search and Google Cloud. In scale, the planned capacity is comparable to powering a small city.
Google is not building alone. It has partnered with Adani Infrastructure to develop the physical campuses, while Bharti Airtel will set up an international subsea cable landing station. This connectivity backbone is expected to link the hub directly to a dozen countries, ensuring low latency for global data traffic.
Vizag’s coastal location plays a key role in that strategy. It enables direct access to subsea cables and provides the large volumes of water needed for cooling data centre operations. Equally important is policy backing from the Government of Andhra Pradesh, which fast-tracked approvals and granted the uncommon discom licence to anchor the investment.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for April 28, 2026, with phased commissioning expected to begin by July 2028.
The broader signal is clear. As AI workloads surge, hyperscalers are no longer content plugging into existing infrastructure. They are beginning to build and control it. In Vizag, Google is not just setting up a data centre, it is wiring up its own future.
