Denmark has announced the appointment of a "digital ambassador" to manage its relationships with technology giants like Google and Apple, becoming the first country to do so.

"Such companies have become a type of new nations and we need to confront that," said Denmark's Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen in a Friday interview with Politiken newspaper after a conference on the future of Denmark's Foreign Service.

Samuelsen said the initiative comes as a result of growing importance of the technology sector in the Danish economy. He further added that tech companies like Google, Apple, IBM, and Microsoft are companies that influence Denmark as much as other nations do.

For instance, according to a recent report in the Financial Times, the minister mentioned that the market values of Apple and Google are so large that the corporations could join the international G20 panel of the world's 20 largest economies, if they were countries.

The digital ambassador will establish and groom Denmark's relations with the tech giants and thus, will act as a tech liaison reflecting a diplomatic power shift between established nations and privately-owned conglomerates. However, the minister also said that the new position will not have Denmark turning away from traditional forms of diplomatic relations.

Both Facebook and Apple recently revealed plans to build data centers in Denmark and it was only last week when Facebook decided it will place a new data center in Odense. The new centers will create around 150 permanent jobs and bring investment worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Samuelsen, while signing the deal with Facebook last week, said that although only one percent of all companies in Denmark are foreign, they create around twenty percent of all Danish jobs, because of which the Danish government works continuously to attract more foreign investments to Denmark.