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Google Building Tech Center Near Portland

Posted by timothy on from the portland-sucks-tell-your-friends dept.

jdray writes "It seems that everyone's favorite search powerhouse, Google, is building a tech center in The Dalles, Oregon. About 45 minutes by interstate highway from Portland, The Dalles is a small, economically depressed city near the world-famous Columbia River Gorge. The $60,000 average annual salary of Google employees is about double the average for Wasco county. With all the outdoor sports (windsurfing, hiking, mountain biking, skiing) in the area, sports-minded geeks should be flocking to apply for a job at the new facility."

2 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. the south by bogaboga · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    All tech houses seem to be in the North...nothing in the south? Why? Will this be called the GooglePlex?

    1. Re:the south by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      According to some folks, the only thing down here in Florida are spammers, which is not accurate.

      Not to rub it in your face as a non-spamming Floridian- and I do understand that most Floridians are not spammers and use email responsibly- but I had to share an interesting anti-spam idea I once saw in a Bugs Bunny cartoon of all places.
      Bugs was angry that the penalty for shooting a rabbit out of rabbit season was two cents, you see, so he went a little nuts and he started doing some very bad things. One of the things he did was take a saw and physically saw Florida right off along its border so that the entire state floated away to sea, presumably taking a large portion of the world's 180 or so spammers with it and severing their connectivity to the mainland.

      Now I know there are problems with this approach. Here are the appropriate spam-form objections:

      (*) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
      (*) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
      (*) The police will not put up with it
      (*) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers

      Specifically, Bugs Bunny's idea fails to account for

      (*) Laws expressly prohibiting it
      (*) Asshats
      (*) Jurisdictional problems

      and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

      (*) Similar ideas are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
      (*) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
      (*) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually

      and especially

      (*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem

      The idea has additional flaws that aren't on the form. But, it's important to "think outside the box" when attacking a persistent problem like this, and to remember that solutions might be found in unconventional places. Maybe, if we lower the rabbit-season penalty to two cents, some smart rabbit will show up with an idea that actually works!