By Amir Mizroch, Lisa Fleisher and Sam Schechner 

Despite a regulatory crackdown that threatens to curb their growth in Europe, U.S. tech giants are doubling down on their operations on the continent.

Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon Inc. have all built or planned massive new data centers in Europe. Uber Technologies Inc. and Facebook Inc. have opened engineering centers. And top executives from the companies have gone on publicity campaigns in cities across the continent to highlight their companies' roles in local economies.

The activity comes against a backdrop of increasing scrutiny from European regulators, who are looking into whether some of the U.S. companies pay enough taxes, abuse their dominant market positions, and protect European's privacy rights. Europe's antitrust regulator has decided to file formal charges against Google for violating the bloc's antitrust laws, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

"I don't believe the increased regulatory and political scrutiny of tech giants will deter them from continuing to invest and expand in Europe," said Tudor Aw, a partner and technology sector head at KPMG.

Apple and Google have been especially outspoken in showcasing their contributions. In February, chief executive Tim Cook visited Seele, the German manufacturer that makes the facade glass for its stores and its new office campus in Cupertino, Calif.

Apple also keeps an updated tally online of its economic impact in Europe: 18,300 people directly employed in Europe, including 11,800 workers in 107 retail stores; and 671,500 jobs in Europe created or "supported" by Apple. Most of those jobs--530,000--are linked to the iOS app store, such as developers who work on apps, and have been created since 2008, Apple says.

Matt Brittin, Google's EMEA chief, has been on a European roadshow over the past several months, talking about how Google is helping small businesses grow through Google AdWords, Google Play and YouTube. His examples include how Google helped an Italian furniture maker and a German cactus farmer find new customers.

Mr. Brittin has committed the company to training one million Europeans to learn digital skills by 2016, adding that Google would invest an additional EUR25 million ($26.3 million) to broaden its current programs and take them to new markets across Europe. The company has spent more than $2.1 billion on data centers. It is expanding the size of its data center in Belgium and building one in The Netherlands that should come online in the first quarter of 2016. It also has data centers in Finland and Ireland.

The company continues to expand its sites and invest heavily in its data centers across Europe, a person familiar with the matter said. The investment in The Netherlands data center comes to EUR600 million. In Belgium it's EUR550 million. In Finland, it's EUR800 million, and Ireland is EUR75 million.

Apple said in February that it would spend nearly $2 billion to build its first two data centers in Europe. The centers, each covering 166,000 square meters, will be built in Denmark and Ireland, the latter serving as Apple's European headquarters. The data centers will go online in 2017, the company said, and would run entirely on renewable energy and create hundreds of local jobs.

The company's message over the past year has sharpened around its economic benefit to Europe, as scrutiny from European lawmakers heats up, particularly over the question of whether Apple pays enough taxes.

EU regulators have said they believe Apple's tax arrangements with Ireland were illegal. Apple has said it received no selective treatment from Irish officials and was subject to the same tax laws as other companies that do business in Ireland.

Amazon.com Inc. has also been investing heavily in Europe, despite being the subject of a tax battle in France and an investigation from the European Union into whether its tax arrangements in Luxembourg constitute illegal state aid--allegations the company denies.

Last fall, the company opened its data center in Frankfurt, its first major data center in continental Europe, in part to show it complies with strict German data-privacy laws. It has also opened three new logistics hubs in Poland, and signed a lease to move into a 15-storey tower in London with a capacity for 5,000 employees.

At the same time, the company says it increased its permanent staffing in Europe by nearly a quarter in 2014, to 32,000 employees--not including seasonal workers.

"Even with all of this hiring, we remain in a phase of heavy investment and have many positions available which we look forward to filling in 2015," said Xavier Garambois, head of Amazon's EU retail business.

Facebook has offices in 10 countries in Europe, including Ireland, its European headquarters, and recently expanded in London and Hamburg. A Facebook-funded study published in January by Deloitte said the company was linked to $51 billion in economic activity in Europe in 2014 and supported 783,000 jobs.

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