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."

Re:Security Risk?

[ocdscouter]

Last time I was there (to scope it out for a potential scout event), I believe that all I had to show was a valid ID, such as a driver's license, to get through the main gate and onto the Moffet field campus.

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

[fightinfilipino]

i'm not exactly seeing how this has Google owning their "physical" lives. these employees have the choice to live either in off-Google-campus housing, which might be far and/or expensive, or in this new housing. they can choose to work for Google, or they can seek employment somewhere else. indentured servitude this ain't. Google employees' freedom to contract hasn't been eroded in some way. i'd say the only negative factor in all this (and it is a significant one) is Google's gobbling up of previously independent communities. but even there, Google can't just take over peoples' homes and businesses, they have to purchase them just like everyone else.

call me when Google starts making work a contracted requirement for basic living necessities or builds unmaintained, dilapidated tenements, then there'll be something worrisome.

Re:Completely Off Topic Question

[srjh]

It's not just about click tracking by Google, it's about having some idea about where the link I'm about to click on will take me.

Even without slashdot's anti-troll inclusion of domain names, you can mouse over a link to see what the actual URL is. But what is "QTRlo" and "rRDok"? Is it something that's going to get me fired? Should I not have eaten before clicking? Is it another "N guys/girls, 1 X" shock site, or an 80's one-hit wonder?

If you know how to use HREF tags and aren't artificially constrained to 140 characters, use the proper URL. Please.

Re:Are Google employees paid in dollars ...?

[cdwiegand]

Employers in most places can pay in whatever way both they and the employee agree on.

Re:obvious

[Asdanf]

Speaking as someone who went to Google out of college, they paid me easily enough to live very nearby.

Re:Where World's Collide

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm shocked by the idea of censoring terms because some people use them as derogative terms. The story of the tar baby is widely known all around the world and this statement, although rude and quite foolish, uses it properly.

In case anyone is unfamiliar with the story just go to "tar baby" on wikipedia...

Re:Security Risk?

[f3rret]

More proof, as if yet more was needed that NASA is just a public front. It showcases ingenius uses of old tech that people are told is the cutting edge. The real cutting edge is classified and reserved for military use and eventually trickles down to public use once it is made obsolete. So yeah, the military contrary to what many believe is NOT stupid, in fact they're damned good at what they do. If they seem to ignore safeguarding NASA it's because the things they want to safeguard are not part of NASA.

Honestly though, much of the stuff they use at NASA is still "cutting edge", not because we couldn't build something better if we really wanted to, but rather because we haven' t needed to yet.

Take for example their Vertical Gun Range [wikipedia.org] it's from the Apollo era, but it is still one of the most developed and advanced light gas guns in existence. Why? Because we haven't needed a bigger and more advanced one so far, and because the thing still generates the data you need to do impact physics.
This is the case with much of our "old" technology; if you will allow me a small digression. I was watching one of those conspiracy theory shows (for the same reasons people watch bad movies, everything they say is hilariously wrong), and because they were apparently running out of ideas they decided to beat the dead horse that is Area 51.
At some point they showed pictures of the SR-71 and said something like "We built this in 1964, do They expect us to believe we haven't built something much more advanced?". Well yeah "They" expect you to believe that because we actually haven't built anything that does what the SR-71 does (go really, really fast with an air-breathing engine) any better than the already SR-71 does it. And incidentally beyond the OMGsocool!-factor the SR-71 was and still is outperformed by the U-2.

Anyhow pardon my digression.
My point still stands, none of what NASA has on display are some watered down version of stuff the military already has more advanced versions of, the old stuff they're displaying as "cutting edge" actually is just that, mainly because no-one cared to make never versions of it.