Google Loses Up to 250 Bikes a Week (siliconbeat.com)

What's happening to Google's 1,100 Gbikes? The Mercury News reports: Last summer, it emerged that some of the company's bikes -- intended to help Googlers move quickly and in environmentally friendly fashion around the company's sprawling campus and surrounding areas -- were sleeping with the fishes in Stevens Creek. And now, a new report has revealed that 100 to 250 Google bikes go missing every week, on average. "The disappearances often aren't the work of ordinary thieves, however. Many residents of Mountain View, a city of 80,000 that has effectively become Google's company town, see the employee perk as a community service," the Wall Street Journal reported.

And for the company, here's one Google bike use case that's got to burn a little: 68-year-old Sharon Veach told the newspaper that she sometimes uses one of the bicycles as part of her commute: to the offices of Google's arch foe, Oracle... Mountain View Mayor Ken Rosenberg even admitted to helping himself to a Google bike to go to a movie after a meeting at the company's campus, according to the WSJ.
One Silicon Valley resident reportedly told a neighbor that "I've got a whole garage full of them," while Veach describes the bikes as "a reward for having to deal with the buses" that carry Google employees. Google has already hired 30 contractors to prowl the city in five vans looking for lost or stolen bikes -- only a third of which have GPS trackers -- and they eventually recover about two-thirds of the missing bikes.

They've discovered them as far away as Mexico, Alaska, and the Burning Man festival in Nevada.

Comments

The I'm-feeling-lucky department?

[Krishnoid]

I'd think it would be more the This-is-why-we can't-have-nice-things department.

Re:The I'm-feeling-lucky department?

[Ol Olsoc]

There is a small rider fee, charged to your WeChat Wallet, which covers losses as well as providing a profit that pays for expanding the system to more outlying areas.

So you are saying after you are done using the bike, you get the Shanghai Bill?

Math Stole Them

[mentil]

Those 1,100 Gbikes are actually 1,024 Gbikes after formatting. It's in the fine print.

Re:I worked a mile from their hq, we used them all

[Anonymous Coward]

So because the bikes were "just chilling out at the train station" you felt it was your right to take them? If somebody has a television just chilling in their house do you think it's okay to take that as well?

It's not an "unofficial bike share," it's theft. The fact that you don't see anything wrong with taking other people's bikes is very worrying.

Re:I worked a mile from their hq, we used them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly How do you know those bikes wern't left at the train station for google employees to use to transit from the station to the office? Now they are without a bike and have to walk thanks to your selfishness.

What google should have done is made their bikes just like the bikes commonly used for bike shares, with the electronic device on them to check out/in the bike. and track its location for recovery They could just use the employee ids to check out/in bikes and not charge like a fee. With google being the company that it is, you would think they would love to collect stats like that about which employees are using them and how frequently.

Can't cross oceans?

[Hognoxious]

They've discovered them as far away as Mexico, Alaska, and the Burning Man festival in Nevada.

Hmm, sounds like a challenge.