Google Preparing To Launch G-Town 251
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."
obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"from the owe-my-soul-to-the-company-store dept (Score:5, Insightful)
I launched sixteen droids and what do I get? A cubicle bedroom and deeper in debt.
Completely Off Topic Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you using a url shortener in a non-twitter-like environment? You could have just copied the URL, just like any other URL instead of passing it through Google, so they'd get click tracking.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Foxconn dorm doesn't look so bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but you probably had the ability to choose whether you would attend that university, live in that dorm, or leave campus.
Re:Where World's Collide (Score:5, Insightful)
Dead on! One might note that Google's campus up until now was the old Silicon Graphics campus - and its construction just about coincides with the beginning of SGI's slide. Campuses are like cocaine for companies - God's way of telling you you have too much money.
Re:I wonder how this will end... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be nice if more companies did this.
You are joking, right? Or do you actually like the idea of your employer not only being able to fire you at will, but simultaneously kick you out of your place of residence? There is not a chance I would ever give a corporation that much power over me, and I've never even left an employer on anything other than good terms.
You saw what happened with the streetview drive by (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"from the owe-my-soul-to-the-company-store dept (Score:1, Insightful)
Google probably owns the "souls" (online personalities) of its employees more than any country in the world.
Really?
Yes, really. Next question!
Protip: come up with an actual objection if you disagree with something. It is much more effective and convincing that way.
Re:obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be nice if more companies did this.
You are joking, right? Or do you actually like the idea of your employer not only being able to fire you at will, but simultaneously kick you out of your place of residence?
I'm reminded of Saltaire in Bradford, UK
It's when they start paying you in their own currency that can only be spent in company stores that you have to worry.
I always thought Google was the real Maas/Neotek (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Completely Off Topic Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Proper URLs with non-ASCII characters tend to have...quirks, on Slashdot. Quite a few of them at Wiki.
Re:Where World's Collide (Score:5, Insightful)
A tar baby is a baby made of tar, from the stories of Uncle Remus. In the story, Br'er Fox created one and persuaded Br'er Rabbit to fight it. The result was that Br'er Rabbit becomes hopelessly stuck to the tar baby and is caught. He escapes by using reverse psychology to persuade Br'er Fox to throw him in the brier patch.
It's been an idiom for a sticky situation for most of a century. The fact that some hypersensitive people choose to take offence at it is no reason to stop using it.
Re:Troubling trend in employer running your life (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget employer provided cell phones and other technogadgets, employer subsidized exercise facilities, tuition reimbursement...