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Inside Google's London Complex

Posted by Zonk on from the morning-browsing dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has some interesting pictures of Google's new London office which is incidentally looking to boost its 200-man headcount. Also, a Doodle 4 Google contest was held in conjunction with the office opening for schoolchildren."

36 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't see why Google needed doodles drawn for them. They have a search engine filled with thousands if you turn off the adult protection.

    1. Re:Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      its an algorithim.. do you really think Google has enough man power to search the entire internet for images and index them on a regular basis?

  2. Prizes by The+New+Andy · · Score: 5, Funny
    The winner of the Doodle 4 Google contest is Lisa Waiwaina, age 11. For her doodle, titled "Day of the Child," her prize was an upper case "G" of frosted glass, and her school won an interactive whiteboard.

    Obvious jokes:

    1) Much better than those non-interactive whiteboards which ignored your marker completely.

    2) Does the whiteboard display advertising relevant to whatever you draw on it.

    3) "her prize was an upper case "G" of frosted glass" - when you put it in those terms, yes that prize does sound like a joke.

    1. Re:Prizes by Army+of+1+in+10 · · Score: 3, Funny
      2) Does the whiteboard display advertising relevant to whatever you draw on it.

      That's nothing that the right Firefox plugin can't handle! ;)

      --
      I am an Army of 1 in 10
  3. 200-man headcount? by essence · · Score: 3, Insightful

    only men work there? no? how hard is it to say 200 person? come on.

    1. Re:200-man headcount? by aussie_a · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wow, get over yourself. Most English speakers have a male bias in their speech. Deal. It's this sort of political correction that drives me up the wall.

    2. Re:200-man headcount? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
      would you be upset if it said 200 woman headcount (but of course that would include men as well) ?

      Yes, because it would be far from normal english.

      From the dictionary.com's usage notes about man:
      Traditionally, many writers have used man and words derived from it to designate any or all of the human race regardless of sex. In fact, this is the oldest use of the word. In Old English the principal sense of man was a human, and the words wer and wyf (or wæpman and wifman) were used to refer to a male human and a female human respectively. But in Middle English man displaced wer as the term for a male human, while wyfman (which evolved into present-day woman) was retained for a female human. Despite this change, man continued to carry its original sense of a human as well, resulting in an asymmetrical arrangement that many criticize as sexist. Nonetheless, a majority of the Usage Panel still accepts the generic use of man, although the women members have significantly less enthusiasm for this usage than the men do. For example, the sentence "If early man suffered from a lack of information, modern man is tyrannized by an excess of it" is acceptable to 81 percent of the Panel but a breakdown by sex shows that only 58 percent of the women Panelists accept it, while 92 percent of the men do.

      While women are less accepting of the general use, at least according to that information, a majority still is.
    3. Re:200-man headcount? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Completely and while we are at it lets standardize on a world language, and make everything politically correct so that we can accost the non-adopters. I bet if you petition long enough it might be a crime to disagree.

      Once again quit nitpicking, you get angry over simple laziness. How about getting over something that truly matters, like the salary gap in genders, or workplace sexual harassment and accept man as a non gender specific term for those to lazy to write out person. Focus on the issues, not the labels.

    4. Re:200-man headcount? by essence · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I do focus on lots of real issues. I'm not a slashbot. It took me 2 minutes to write that comment, in the hope that it would make some people think. Sure, most people are used to using man to mean both men and women, including allot of women. But writing person instead of man does make it more accessible to women (and men) who might be offended or alienated. It's not that hard to change the little things like that. I find it interesting that so many people get upset that i pointed it out.

      and no, i wouldn't want to make it a crime to disagree. Creating laws for this sort of thing doesn't work. People don't like being forced to do things. The only solution is discussion and action by people, not the state.

    5. Re:200-man headcount? by gihan_ripper · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I completely agree with your comment. As a (male) professional mathematician, I see outrageous overt sexism in the academic commmunity, but whenever anyone suggests the use of gender-neutral terms they are often lambasted (largely by the older generation) as politally correct weenies.

      The point that many science geeks completely fail to realize is that 'labels' are important. Our use of language deeply affects our relationship with the world and the manner in which we perceive our environment and fellow human beings.

      At a certain very old university, I've known a number of mathematicians who were extremely distressed by the display of a "Men of Mathematics" poster. Yes, our current use of the English language allows us to describe any collection of workers as male, but this is an anachronism, harking back to a time when only men did "real" work. In the same manner, it used to be commonplace, well into the 20th century, to refer to someone who drove a hard bargain as a Jew. Now tell me is it mere 'political correctness' which prevents us from using the word Jew in this way, or is it that we have become a more enlightened species?

      --
      Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
    6. Re:200-man headcount? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
      how hard is it to say 200 person?

      If you say 200 person, some politically-correct-nazi will jump out at you, and chasticize you for not saying 200 perdaughter.

    7. Re:200-man headcount? by koekepeer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Now tell me is it mere 'political correctness' which prevents us from using the word Jew in this way, or is it that we have become a more enlightened species?"

      if you were truly enlightened, would it even affect you if someone called someone else a jew? why do, in issues of (presumed) discrimination/racism, people invariably assume the worst in other people? maybe because we *all* are prejudiced?

      methinks a better way to increase the peace is to stop assuming and projecting our own prejudice onto others. works a heck of a lot better than pointing the finger and saying "you are bad because you are prejudiced". this while, in fact, you are saying: "you are bad because you just said something i associate with being prejudiced", revealing your own prejudice in the process. hypocrisy invokes conflict. understanding and acceptation creates peace.

    8. Re:200-man headcount? by ggy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hmm... It's a building full of geeks. So I'd say the chances are quite good! ;)

    9. Re:200-man headcount? by Moses_Gunn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Feeding a troll here, but this irks me. I haven't researched this DEEPLY, so I may be wrong, but this is my understanding of the issue. Most languages (including those that I have studied: German, Spanish, and Arabic) have gendered nouns. For instance, in German the word for "the" is der, die, or das for masculine, feminine, and neuter respectively. Somewhere along the line, English lost this feature, and nouns no longer have gender. However, originally, the word "man", in the context of referring to "mankind" was of NEUTRAL gender. Thus, not only is today's use of the word "man" to mean "people" NOT sexist, but is actually gender correct.

      Read more here under the "Etymology" section:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man

      Not to mention the fact that it doesn't sound STUPID like "200-person". ;)

  4. Disappointing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...No matrix-entrance chair, no bridge, no engineering... What kind of a starship is this googleplex?

  5. Since when... by mulhall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...is a picture of an office block news?

  6. Hey google where's data center photo? by vivekg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Drawing by kids are ok, office is just like any other modern office but what I wanna see some pics of data center .. This is what I know so far, photo:the early days of Google's data center http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1709

    --
    The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
  7. PICS - MIRROR by Eightyford · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you don't want to click through 15 pages of ads you can view the pics here: just pics though, no text

    --
    Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
    1. Re:PICS - MIRROR by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Interesting

      http://www.eightyford.com/google/02-googleplex.jpg

      What the... Oh right, this is England. :-s
      Anyway, where's the male kids?

      http://www.eightyford.com/google/06-googleplex.jpg

      Cute, the trademark sign in a heart!
      I'm sure they'll grow up to become good business(wo)men. :-)

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  8. Datacenter pictures by this+great+guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We have often read about Google's datacenters on /. but AFAIK we have never seen any picture of their datacenters. So if somebody has something to say/show about this (even insiders :P), please reply to this post.

    1. Re:Datacenter pictures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The video from this link has amazing info and pictures of the datacenters.
      http://www.uwtv.org/programs/displayevent.asp?rid= 2459

  9. a Google bangalore saga by Gopal.V · · Score: 3, Funny

    Some guys from Yahoo Bangalore recently stalked google, apparently they came back quite unimpressed.

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
  10. At least one sign... by Justen · · Score: 4, Funny

    It must be a sign that Slashdot folk are aging (and maturing, and having kids, etc.) when photos of elementary school children on a field trip is now a top story.

    justen

  11. Great doodles by Lewisham · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I love these doodles! Google should have a user-submitted doodle every day; spice it up a bit.

    Maybe there's a Greasemonkey script here...

  12. Non-karma whoring link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    looks to be slashdotted, heres the non-karma-whoring cache

    http://zdnet.com.au.nyud.net:8090/insight/software /print.htm?TYPE=story&AT=39223136-39023769t-100001 02c

    1. Re:Non-karma whoring link by killa62 · · Score: 2, Informative

      wow, i like how this link doesn't work and how 2 mods wasted 2 mod points modding a non-working link up...
      this link works tho
      http://zdnet.com.au/insight/software/print.htm?TYP E=story&AT=39223136-39023769t-10000102c
      and yes, karma whore me plz
      kthxbye

  13. And from New York... by pomo+monster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Curbed.com has a photo tour of Google's new office in Chelsea (15th at 8th), for which they just signed the lease a few days ago. At 311,000 square feet, it's over three times the size of their previous midtown space.

    The floor's not much to look at now, but I'm looking forward to seeing it fully decked out when they throw a party someday (keeping my fingers crossed!) I'll invite y'all.

  14. All the children drew "tm" by anzev · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's interesting to me how all the children drew the TM mark in the upper right corner of the image. I wonder... :-) Starting young I see... Maybe it's so we can say "In soviet Russia, the TM draws you in the upper right corner" :-), or "imagine a beowulf cluster of thesee"

    1. Re:All the children drew "tm" by KylePflug · · Score: 2, Funny
      If you look with your eyes, you may see that in 2 of 5 pictures, the TM is clearly done after the kids are done with the drawings.
      I'm glad you pointed that out. I'd been looking with my feet, and hadn't seen that.
    2. Re:All the children drew "tm" by artifex2004 · · Score: 2, Informative
      If you look with your eyes, you may see that in 2 of 5 pictures, the TM is clearly done after the kids are done with the drawings.

      Plus they probably had the original Google-logo with the TM to base their doodles on.


      Sure looks to me like these were just xerographed logos, that they colored with crayons and markers. Meaning the TM wasn't added after, it was there all along, just ignored by some children. So perhaps counter-jokes about kids starting young ignoring trademarks and copyrights are more appropriate. 2 in 5? 40%?
  15. Aghh by t_allardyce · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why do all modern buildings have to look so cheap? That's nearly as bad as a 60's concrete monstrosity.

    --
    This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
  16. Maddox anyone? by scrwvwls · · Score: 2, Funny

    http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ir ule

  17. Interresting by davlucas · · Score: 2

    I don't know how was made the test, but it seems to me very symbolic that the 10-11 y.o. children recognize the google graphic policy.
    Well, most of them should have internet at home, BUT I'm not sure they can draw logo of other big firm as easilly as they did with the google one.
    Concerning the google desks, I suppose these desks are for the commercials entity, as the technic ones don't really need desk all over the world. At least, I don't see the interest to rent a building if the same can be done from home.
    In a nutshell, congratulations for GOOGLE which is the only one 1999 startup to have succeed.

  18. google-analytics on Slashdot by Oscaro · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know I'm going almost off-topic, but I think all slashdot readers should know that the much-discussed google-analytics scripts (see here) are included on every page on this site.

    Check the page source and see for yourself.

  19. Google NYC by RTSKABJ · · Score: 2, Informative

    Pictures of the new NYC Googleplex have been posted online as well, here.

  20. Sausage machine by clsc · · Score: 2

    Am I the only one that get reminded of the Sausage Machine in the The Wall movie when looking at picture 2?