Google Preparing To Launch G-Town

theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that Google's aggressive online growth increasingly has a counterpart in bricks and mortar, with the company's Mountain View HQ mushrooming in the past four years to occupy more than 4 million square feet. And that's just for starters. On Silicon Valley's NASA Ames base, Google is preparing to build a new corporate campus with fitness and day care facilities and — in a first in the valley — employee housing, adding 1.2 million sqare feet to Google's real estate holdings. 'I don't want to say it's the new company town,' said commercial real estate VP Gregory M. Davies of Google's role, 'but it's not far from it.' Presumably, no anti-suicide nets will be needed for this one."

Comments

obvious

[bhcompy]

Considering the cost of home ownership(and rentals for that matter) in the Bay area/San Jose area, this is pretty obvious. They attract a lot of people out of college who simply can't afford to live within any reasonable distance of the facility. So they rent/buy in places like Tracy, which are 90+minutes away. It would be nice if more companies did this.

Re:obvious

[redemtionboy]

Plus, what other houses have gigabit internet!

Re:obvious

[blincoln]

It would be nice if more companies did this.

You are joking, right? Or do you actually like the idea of your employer not only being able to fire you at will, but simultaneously kick you out of your place of residence? There is not a chance I would ever give a corporation that much power over me, and I've never even left an employer on anything other than good terms.

Re:obvious

[safetyinnumbers]

It would be nice if more companies did this.

You are joking, right? Or do you actually like the idea of your employer not only being able to fire you at will, but simultaneously kick you out of your place of residence?

I'm reminded of Saltaire in Bradford, UK

It's when they start paying you in their own currency that can only be spent in company stores that you have to worry.

Re:"from the owe-my-soul-to-the-company-store dept

[dgatwood]

I launched sixteen droids and what do I get? A cubicle bedroom and deeper in debt.

Completely Off Topic Question

[coaxial]

Why are you using a url shortener in a non-twitter-like environment? You could have just copied the URL, just like any other URL instead of passing it through Google, so they'd get click tracking.

Re:Completely Off Topic Question

[sznupi]

Proper URLs with non-ASCII characters tend to have...quirks, on Slashdot. Quite a few of them at Wiki.

Re:I wonder how this will end...

[DrEldarion]

I'm not a tinfoil hat guy, but I really wonder about some of the implications of one company controlling a lot of the advertising market and having a pretty accurate profile about you to share with its customers.

One of the big reasons that Google is so trusted in advertising is specifically because they don't share details with advertisers. Google looks at its available inventory of ads, looks at the user requesting the ad, looks at the site the ad is on, and uses an algorithm to pick the result. They don't offer crazy targeting options like, for instance, Facebook. IIRC, it's limited to targeting by region. (and then computer-specific stuff like OS)

Re:Foxconn dorm doesn't look so bad

[skine]

Yes, but you probably had the ability to choose whether you would attend that university, live in that dorm, or leave campus.

Re:Where World's Collide

[putaro]

Dead on! One might note that Google's campus up until now was the old Silicon Graphics campus - and its construction just about coincides with the beginning of SGI's slide. Campuses are like cocaine for companies - God's way of telling you you have too much money.

Re:I wonder how this will end...

[TamCaP]

It's not only tthe IT sector! If you ever have a chance to read Benjamin Graham's book "The Intelligent Investor" you will see that many companies described there (from the 60s and 70s) are no more than silly sounding names today. Railroad industry was considered ultra-powerful and very stable, to fall apart almost overnight from the historical point of view. Corporate histories are not as boring as some people think.

You saw what happened with the streetview drive by

[kawabago]

Just driving down the street Google managed to compromise everyone's privacy. Imagine what they'd do if they built your house!

Re:"from the owe-my-soul-to-the-company-store dept

[Anonymous Coward]

Google probably owns the "souls" (online personalities) of its employees more than any country in the world.

Really?

Yes, really. Next question!

Protip: come up with an actual objection if you disagree with something. It is much more effective and convincing that way.

I always thought Google was the real Maas/Neotek

[Lord Agni]

And now they're going to build an arcology.

Re:Where World's Collide

[TheRaven64]

A tar baby is a baby made of tar, from the stories of Uncle Remus. In the story, Br'er Fox created one and persuaded Br'er Rabbit to fight it. The result was that Br'er Rabbit becomes hopelessly stuck to the tar baby and is caught. He escapes by using reverse psychology to persuade Br'er Fox to throw him in the brier patch.

It's been an idiom for a sticky situation for most of a century. The fact that some hypersensitive people choose to take offence at it is no reason to stop using it.

Re:Troubling trend in employer running your life

[vlm]

Don't forget employer provided cell phones and other technogadgets, employer subsidized exercise facilities, tuition reimbursement...