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Google's Parent Company Alphabet Is Buying Chelsea Market For $2 Billion (qz.com)
Alphabet is close to acquiring the iconic Chelsea Market in Midtown Manhattan for over $2 billion. The market totals 1.2 million square feet and sits across the street from the company's New York headquarters, a 2.9 million-square-foot building that it bought for $1.8 billion in 2010. Quartz reports: Google is already the Market's largest tenant, having steadily expanded its footprint to about 400,000 square feet. The tech giant hasn't revealed plans for the property, but according to The Real Deal, the company is expected to maintain the status quo. Alphabet's aggressive expansion in New York follows a growing trend of tech giants taking over cities. With their outsized share of the economy, tech companies are exerting increasing influence over urban infrastructure and development.
Google's Market Captilization (value of all the stock shares) is between 400 and 500 billion US dollars.
Value of Manhattan residential real estate (just the homes, not the industry or corporate stuff of just the main borrough, not the other companies, not the real estate in Staten Island, Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens) is over 700 billion US dollars..
Google is big, but not that big.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That's actually an amusing aside.
I know IBM used to put R&D sites somewhat near big cities but not in big cities. They were very generous with things like home loans and the like because once you bought a house and put down roots in East Butfuque, AR you were less likely to want to quit and go elsewhere.
So they were far enough away that you couldn't quit and commute to the big city where there were lots of jobs but they were close enough that you could actually go to the big city without it being a huge endeavor.