Slashdot Mirror
Google, Tesla, and Facebook Attract 'Hordes of Tech Tourists' To Their Headquarters (siliconvalley.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
"We just came from Oracle, then we go to HP, Google; we're going to do Tesla, Intel, eBay and Yahoo. And Apple, I forgot Apple..." says one San Francisco resident, describing a tour he's providing for his friend from Tokyo. In fact, Silicon Valley's iconic tech companies have discovered tourists are now dropping in on their headquarters. "It was nice to walk between the buildings, take some pictures and see the employees enjoy their lunch break," wrote one visitor to Google's campus, before complaining that Google hadn't also provided them with bathroom access. "We got told not to use the Google bikes as they are for employees only, which was a bit of a shame," another visitor complained.
"Hundreds of people a day visit the Facebook sign and Google's Android sculpture garden in Mountain View," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, "with many stopping at other tech giants as well, snapping photos and shooting video..." In fact, Tesla, Apple, Facebook, and Google have all now installed stores where tourists can purchase branded merchandise. (Google sells figurines of their Android mascot for $15). "What you're seeing are people on a pilgrimage..." said Stanford communications professor Fred Turner. "Folks are looking for a physical place behind the kind of dematerialized experience that they have online."
Intel has its own museum, and the Los Altos garage where Steve Jobs started Apple has even been designated a historic site. Are there any other historic tech sites that should be preserved to inspire future generations of tourists?
"Hundreds of people a day visit the Facebook sign and Google's Android sculpture garden in Mountain View," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, "with many stopping at other tech giants as well, snapping photos and shooting video..." In fact, Tesla, Apple, Facebook, and Google have all now installed stores where tourists can purchase branded merchandise. (Google sells figurines of their Android mascot for $15). "What you're seeing are people on a pilgrimage..." said Stanford communications professor Fred Turner. "Folks are looking for a physical place behind the kind of dematerialized experience that they have online."
Intel has its own museum, and the Los Altos garage where Steve Jobs started Apple has even been designated a historic site. Are there any other historic tech sites that should be preserved to inspire future generations of tourists?
By anonymous cowards
blackout lockdown,, nobody leaves but the strays... cease fire stand down.. no bomb us more mom us... that's the spirit... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOaXTg3nAuY
You mean where Steve Wozniak started Apple while Steve Jobs stood over him watching and plotting?
Perhaps there should be a shrine for Saint Steve?
Erm... those are Pokemon Go players.
Summation 2
They're all hoping to get a last sighting of the American Dream.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Really? Who the fuck complains about a company not letting some random outsiders touch their property? Need a bathroom - use a fucking public restroom. Surely there are restaurants or shops near-by that are meant for public use. And the most pretentious has to be that bicycle comment. I mean, if GoogleEmp came wanting to use your bike, would you let them? Fuck no. That's just weird. Get your own damn bike, or go rent one from a public facility that offers bike rentals.
These complaints are completely invalid, and the people that wrote them need to be slapped.
Are there any other historic tech sites that should be preserved to inspire future generations of tourists?
The Egyptian pyramids pretty much summarizes it all. Maybe paint the big eye in at the apex.
the Los Altos garage where Steve Jobs started Apple has even been designated a historic site
Well done Steve Jobs, sometimes it's easy to forget that he started Apple all by himself.
In fact, Tesla, Apple, Facebook, and Google have all now installed stores where tourists can purchase branded merchandise.
It wouldn't surprise me if they all opened a Kool-aid stands as well.
It's got historical value, one of the first major computer installations. TPF (Transaction Processing Facility) was developed by IBM and this location at 4000 N Mingo was one of the first deployed installations of it. It's two stories underground, behind a huge blast door. Unfortunately, it's off-limits to the public (and most employees that work there too). There might be a couple of dozen people who have access to it. I had to beg for two years just to go down; even then I didn't get to see all of it. Conspiracy theory says it's connected to the "underground UFO transport system" lol. Some claim that there has been UFO sightings / storage there, but it IS on Tulsa International Airport grounds and there are many drunk Okies around hahaha.
It would make a great place to hole up in case of some apocalypse. If you shut down all the computers, you could have enough on-site generated electricity to last a few years. Plus your behind several tall fences with barbed-wire, and isn't located inside Tulsa proper. Even better, Lake Yahola and it's water processing systems is less than two miles away, and just north is Mohawk Park that has wild game running around.
Apple's had a store there for about 20 years. Although last time I was there they didn't sell computers and phones, which was weird. More of a gift shop.
Several years ago I was at some meeting in one of the Google buildings. During some lunch time (on a weekend) I was walking through the streets in Google campus looking around and at other (closed) buildings, just curious. And some Google security guard stopped me I must return back to that my meeting building. May the guard do that? Are the streets there really a Google private propery? There was no gate to enter the Google campus and I was looking like a normal geek.
They have museums, exhibits, etc. The Space Flight Simulator and Space Flight Operations Facility are historical monuments. SFOF is the hub of all incoming data from the Deep Space Network ... and essentially every bit of information passed from remote probes to humankind.
Plotting? I didn't know Steve Jobs was that much into mathematics.
Ezekiel 23:20
...but given the rest of the exhibits, I think the ass that SCO pulled out its patent claims would qualify.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
and see the employees enjoy their lunch break
They'll dance if you throw them a peanut.
.. and I never got to see it, only the sign that remains. Namely the building that hosted the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. The lab that basically started Silicon Valley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It was located at 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, California. Now all that remains is a signpost.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Notable not only for what it holds, but also for where it is -- in the shell of what had been an industry-leading company -- Silicon Graphics.
Remember, all are as Rome...
As are the Silicon Valley homes of Tandem Computers, and HP's computer division -- both sites swallowed up to become the Apple Spaceship
They might be. Google Street View doesn't show any signage coming off Amphitheater road/drive/street but it might be in the trees or something.
"What you're seeing are people on a pilgrimage..." said Stanford communications professor Fred Turner. "Folks are looking for a physical place behind the kind of dematerialized experience that they have online."
What a load of hoo-ha. I've seen these hordes of tourists - they're just trying to round out their busy day, checking more or less random places off a long list.
It's like the Japanese tourists I saw at Pearl Harbor. It was just a place the tour bus took them. I saw a lot of smiling tourists posing with the wreath that's in front of the wall listing the dead. It wasn't a pilgrimage, and I don't think it was even meant to be disrespectful - it was just a place on a long list, and they went there without thinking much about it at all.
#DeleteChrome
visiting the dump where all of the old x86s lay. I am pretty sure bathroom access is possible all over the site.
Until Google can figure out how to market to you or data-mine you using them.
- Apple Bandley 3
- Former Atari HQ on Borregas.
- The original Sunnyvale Fry's "memory chip" building
it may have been jobs' *parent's* house.. but he was hardly alone. if it was just jobs, apple, its products and its successes would simply not exist. woz was the tech brain that did all the work, not jobs. jobs was just a fucking hippie would could talk an eskimo into buying ice cubes.
I think he was scheming...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The Computer History Museum is on Shoreline Drive, a couple of blocks from the Googleplex. It has public bathrooms. Check the website for hours. The building was built for Silicon Graphics' Marketing department. The Googleplex was the Silicon Graphics' Engineering building. Also in the neighborhood is Microsoft and LinkedIn.
Tektronix used to close some streets through their campus once a year to ensure they didn't become a public thoroughfare.
For years, tourists coming to LA have wanted to "see Hollywood" as one of the widely-publicized attractions of the area. Inevitably they were disappointed because there was nothing for tourists to see. All the activity of film making takes place in offices and studios away from the public view. The Universal Studios theme park conversion helped a little, but now there's Hollywood & Highland Center, a place where tourists can go to experience a sort of summary of Hollywood culture and history. It is built around a replica of the sets from the silent classicIntolerancefamous venues like Grauman's Chinese and the home of the Oscars, Loew's Hollywood, Madame Tussaud's, and a subway station. Yes, a real working subway station.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was once in Ford's museum in Detroit. To be fair, the museum is way more than museum about Ford, but part of the tour was to go to see the F-150 factory. We could even see the assembly line. I bought a T-shirt that I wear very often (Made in USA! 10yrs later, still in good condition). I never considered that visit to be anyhow strange.
For bonus points, tell them you're a driver.
and his first server.
Google has "open campus" idea, and allow people on the streets, just don't disturb employees, be an ass or try and go into a building..
Their security guards are nice and usually have maps to the Android park (since google does not seem to be able to put up a sign?)
Facebook has more of a closed campus, so only for employees, they don't like if you walk beside their building..
Only ok thing there is their "thumbs" sign (which is actually a old Sun Microsystems sign which they did not spend some dollars hiding up the backside...)
Those big companies could get together and develop the tourism abit better, talk to guiding companies for arranged tours and it does not have to be
any entering building.. Instead of random geeks, tourists etc...
Google US Spy Corp. and Facebook US Spy Corp. and Intel US Spy Corp. and Apple Chinese Spy Corp. and Yahoo CIA fave compromised e-mail provider and Oracle US Spy Corp. and Fiona's leftover HP Spy Corp. components made in China for US Spy operations had this big fat story get-together about hordes of (new name: tech tourists) that visited Google's Spy campus and used their bathrooms and a bunch of other shit. Crowds of them checked out sculptures or whatever.
You mother fuckers are gay as fuck.
I think he was scheming...
Scheming? I didn't know he was that much into LISP dialects....
How about the Apollo 11 or alternatively the Apollo 17 landing site, the last time humans foot boots on the lunar ground? Preserve it from future droid/drone attacks from hardcore space enthusiasts too poor to get their organic selves onto a rocketship.
You can visit the HP garage, which is still there. It is considered to be the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The building that housed the lab where IBM developed the RAMAC, the first disk drive, is a landmark. It's at 99 Notre Dame Street in San Jose. There is a group that wants to have a museum there. However, the Computer History Museum has the last RAMAC that exists
The Intel Museum is at 2200 Mission College Blvd., Santa Clara, CA.
It's essentially through the front door of the headquarters building and off to the left.
It has some stuff about Intel, some about semiconductors in general, some about computers.
Some of the displays are somewhat interactive. Others are more typical museum with a group of objects and some text about the objects.
I think the "bunny suit" is something people find interesting. And (hopefully) here's a video clip with the bunny suit in the museum:
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v...
I have personal experience as a Google employee regarding tourists, and I can share some of it.
As a rule, we don't mind tourists at all. We're used to it. Everybody wants to "visit Google" and take pictures next to Google logos. For most part, tourists don't cause big problems, but there are some exceptions.
The first problem is the bikes. Yes, it may seem obvious to many, but the bikes are the property of Google for exclusive use by employees. Unfortunately, some tourists don't get the idea. I used to work in a somewhat remote building and used bikes to come to main campus for lunch and meetings. Many times, I couldn't find a bike to go back, while 10-20 tourists are riding around in them. I once saw a huge number of tourists get off a bus straight into bikes and ride in every direction, across the streets, across the parking lots, etc. Bad idea and lack of consideration.
Speaking of buses, that's another problem. Tour bus driver will park anywhere. There's a lot of people in the Google Campus, and some places get VERY crowded during rush hour, because that's where the Google commuter buses stop to pick passengers. It's not uncommon to have tour buses *park* at those stops, throwing the whole thing into chaos. I once (nicely) asked one driver if he could move a bit forward, since it was raining and he was parked right in the middle of a 3-bus loading spot. He just plain ignored me as if I was not there.
Oh, and for some reason, tourists just don't seem to realize that a green colored lane with bike signs painted all over it are bike lanes and walk all over it, forcing you to bike around people on the sidewalks.
There's also the issue of "employee sponsored tourism". We all have friends and acquaintances who want to know Google, and we all bring people in once in a while. The problem happens when people don't control their guests. At Charlie's (the biggest and most popular cafe), it's common to have people bring their entire families for lunch (including in-laws), especially those coming from cultures where family ties are strong. Many of these visitors don't realize that they are entering a work environment. It's terrible when I'm looking to wolf down a lunch in a hurry because I'm oncall and I have to wait in line at the coke machine for 10 minutes because a bunch of people can't decide what they want, or waste time looking for a seat because tourists "pre-selected" seats in the restaurant by dropping their purses and belongings (which is discouraged internally).
All in all, it's not much of a burden to employees, and more of a positive than negative experience, but speaking from the inside, it has the potential to suck at times.
Formerly the Sun Microsystems campus. The old Sun sign is still on the reverse side of the new facebook sign.
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/zuckerbergs-not-subtle-message-facebook-employees-dont-end-like-sun-microsystems/
Has much more history than the big Tech Firms, some historical buildings, it's a nice place to walk around, and you probably will be able to use a restroom.
LISP? I didn't know Steve Jobs had a lisp...
The headquarters of atari in sunnyvale should be preserved.