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Google Gets Land For Its Futuristic Headquarters, Thanks To LinkedIn Deal (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that Google and LinkedIn have worked out a deal that will allow the two neighbors to swap a few million square feet of real estate. The deal will help give Google enough room to build its futuristic "canopy" campus. Ars Technica reports: "Google will receive all of LinkedIn's existing Mountain View territory, which consists of LinkedIn's 370,000-square-feet headquarters and almost eight acres of land LinkedIn had planned on turning into office space. LinkedIn will move a few miles across town into four office buildings currently owned by Google that come out to about 750,000 square feet of office space. LinkedIn instantly gets to double its office space while avoiding a costly 'five- to six-year' construction project, and Google gets the space and building rights it needs to build its crazy indoor/outdoor spiderweb canopy utopia. Google owns a huge chunk of land in Mountain View with many office buildings, but the buildings have all been hand-me-downs. In February 2015, Google announced plans to renovate its campus with an ambitious design featuring a large membrane covering configurable activity space. To expand, both LinkedIn and Google needed to compete for Mountain View's 2.2 million square feet of available commercial square footage. The city, fearing it would become an all-Google town, awarded the majority of the construction rights -- 1.4 million square feet -- to LinkedIn, leaving Google with nowhere to build its new headquarters. With the real estate swap, those construction rights go to Google, so the company now has all the space it asked for." Last month, Microsoft announced plans to acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

44 comments

  1. Pave the Bay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nowhere left to go but up or east.

  2. Google screws us again! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mountain View has been destroyed and the lives of the residents destroyed by Google. Hopefully the city will destroy this sale of construction rights to stop this Google attack on us.

    1. Re:Google screws us again! by ganjadude · · Score: 3, Insightful

      im heartbroken for folks who got millions for quarter acre lots just heartbroken

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    2. Re:Google screws us again! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mountain View has been destroyed and the lives of the residents destroyed by Google. Hopefully the city will destroy this sale of construction rights to stop this Google attack on us.

      I am a bit of a Google fanboy... they have done a lot of good things in the area, and their employees spend a lot of money in local businesses. But after 30 years as a Mountain View resident, I had to face the fact that I cannot afford to stay. Google has simply priced many of us out of the city.

    3. Re:Google screws us again! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would rent control help or would that only be a drop in the bucket?

    4. Re:Google screws us again! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Approving more construction would help, instead of expecting everything to stay the same.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  3. We need to expel Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stopping their growth is not enough and this is just hateful for Microsoft to do his.

    1. Re:We need to expel Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stopping their growth is not enough and this is just hateful for Microsoft to do his.

      This. Microsoft is doing this because of their inferiority complex. They hate the Bay Area for being smarter, and want us to die. We are literally dying under the pressure of Google, and this will make it worse. My three hour commute to Mountain View is going to get worse, and I already want to die. Want to die.

    2. Re:We need to expel Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The rest of the world wants SV to die so the world can get over the intellectually inbred "innovators" class that lives there.

  4. Something I've observed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When a company moves into brand new headquarters, it usually spells the beginning of the end.

    Seems to happen a lot anyway.

    1. Re:Something I've observed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I doubt it's going to happen to Apple, because they're basically a sovereign currency issuer now, collecting a tax on apps and music. But I do remember Sun in the late 90s building a huge new building towards the end of their dominance.

  5. Spiderweb Canopy Utopia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't wait to see what goes down when Logan finally escapes from this thing.

  6. And so, by Grand+Facade · · Score: 1

    the looting of Linkedin begins

    --
    Rick B.
    1. Re:And so, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, it worked very well for Nokia, didn't it?

    2. Re:And so, by bigdady92 · · Score: 2

      nothing of value was lost.

      --
      Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
    3. Re:And so, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      nothing of value was lost.

      Amen to that! The only thing I got out of my LinkedIn account was incessant emails from recruiters that ended to be nothing. Meaning, I never - ever - got a job because of my LinkedIn account. It did nothing for me professionally. And too many of my friends and acquaintances allowed LinkedIn to access their contacts list from their email accounts. So I was getting dieticians and folks who I never wanted to see again being suggested as a link.

      In the meantime, quite a bit of personal information was up there being pimped out by LinkedIn and god knows who others were looking at it. All those hidden inquiries to my profile creeped me out so much, I just closed my account down. And every email from a recruiter I received, I checked them out and frankly, a few of them looked like fakes - meaning, they looked like folks who were trying to get personal information out of me to do something criminal with it.

      My life is better without LinkedIn.

    4. Re:And so, by rholtzjr · · Score: 1
      No worries, I deactivated my account a couple of months ago.

      The bonus I received is the incessant spamming of non-existing developer roles or that were never available are no longer coming to my inbox.

  7. US Goverment have all the LinkedIn data already .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And so does Google, and so does Microsoft.

    So what is the actual news? Will any of them be alive tomorrow?

  8. Time to Short Google (Alphabet) Stock by I'm+just+joshin · · Score: 2

    Every time a high tech company builds a new 'amazing' campus their stock falls soon after.

    Seagate
    Oracle
    Yahoo
    nNvidia
    AMD
    Microsoft
    Apple (in the 90's)
    and so on...

    1. Re:Time to Short Google (Alphabet) Stock by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Apple (in the 90's)

      And soon too - Apple's spaceship campus is set to open either end of this year or mid 2017...

      Though I've always wanted to know what Apple would do with their existing 1 Infinite Loop address. (So-called because their new Cray supercomputer is so fast, it can run an infinite loop in under 60 seconds). The other thing was, Apple used the Cray to design Macs, while Cray used Macs to manage the Cray - you interacted with the Mac running in front of the Cray.

    2. Re:Time to Short Google (Alphabet) Stock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except the ones that dont. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one(s) those are.

  9. Re: How to improve Slashdot: eliminate moderators by ganjadude · · Score: 2

    no, we just dont like whining

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  10. GOOGLE IS DOOMED!!1! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If there's one thing I learned from the new Apple campus discussion, when a company does this, they are about to tank.

    Oh well, at least this one won't be missed.

  11. Google are pedos as Policia Federal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't rape children so I lost any interest of working at Google.

  12. Eeh? by fubarrr · · Score: 0

    Just why googlers are so weird?

  13. Re: How to improve Slashdot: eliminate moderators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pointing out how moderation is killing Slashdot isn't whining, no matter how much you think otherwise. There's a reason there are far fewer comments today than in the past. Moderators have killed the once lively discussions that took place on this site.

  14. Beginning of the end for Google by eis2718bob · · Score: 1

    If you've read Parkinson's Law (and you should!) you'd know that institutions begin their decline just at the time they move into their perfect, palatial quarters.

  15. Re: How to improve Slashdot: eliminate moderators by tripleevenfall · · Score: 0

    In Soviet Russia, whining moderates YOU!

  16. Re: How to improve Slashdot: eliminate moderators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This might have been funny 15 years ago, but the moderators will undoubtedly mod it up to +5.

  17. Re: How to improve Slashdot: eliminate moderators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Agreed. Allow the editors to mod posts but don't allow ordinary users to do so. Also, make karma expire, so users can't rack up high karma and then post the typical dumb comments that logged-in users make, living in a few comments a long time ago that were modded up. Ideally, we'd get rid of logged-in users altogether and all post as ACs, but that may be asking too much.

  18. Tune in next week by Snufu · · Score: 1

    for another fascinating episode of Commercial Real Estate Headlines?

  19. And again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google copies Apple (and their 'space ship' campus). The day google does something innovative is the day the earth will crack in two.

  20. Wrong, Jackass by s.petry · · Score: 2

    Your post is hidden and receives a lower rating because you are hiding in anonymity. You are allowed to do that, but you do not get favoritism in moderation because of it. User accounts subject to Karma DO get favoritism in that regard, _IF_ they maintain high enough Karma to have the bonus and decide to keep it on.

    Nobody hides your post you turd! Good grief, anyone can browse at -1 and see even your drivel. The moderation guidelines used to recommend that you do browse at -1 (I'm not going to look, you are the one whining so you can check). This is so that people who moderate can fix shilling/sock-puppetry/malicious moderation.

    As a person who has been here using a login account for a very very long time I will happily tell you that there are moderation problems. You have no fucking clue what they are, or at least didn't present a single one here, but they exist. People and companies with multiple accounts who cheat to gain mod points for example is a valid complaint. You whining in all these posts about how abused you are as you hide in the anonymous basement is not.

    Want good higher ranking posts at the time you submit? Use a named account, and don't post whiny rants. Don't want a name account, STFU.

    No, I won't respond to further trolling.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  21. Futuristic cube farm by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    Yay.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  22. Working outdoors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can do this already, when I feel like it. No Goople needed.

  23. Buried lede by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 1

    I'm betting, all told, Google and Linked in pay about $200 in actual taxes and fees to Mountain View proper, for in the US, the bigger the corporation, the less they actually pay to support their physical presence (i.e., 'company town').

  24. High cost of living by Supercooldude · · Score: 1

    Why do so many tech companies insist on locating themselves in neighborhoods where a modest house costs $3 million? There are countless cities with reasonable costs of living, surely they could still attract lots of qualified people there?

    1. Re:High cost of living by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You got it backwards. They weren't quite so high cost until the tech companies moved in. Once they moved in, the surrounding neighborhoods became desirable to the richer tech employees, that quickly drove up the cost of housing.

  25. Re: How to improve Slashdot: eliminate moderators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This post has been modded "offtopic" because it is.