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To be fair, if Google cared about cost of living, they wouldn't keep and keep on building in the Valley so much.

Living condition in Edmonton is pretty terrible in the Winter. They still have snow up to May sometimes. But on the other hand, this might be perfect for research. Keeps you focused when there's nothing else to do. If it's a great workplace, might as well hang out at work all the time.

Google's domed / canopied campus ideas actually make sense in Edmonton. In Mountain View they're only protecting people from lovely weather.

...or London.

Far less distractions too.

And pretty much in the middle of nowhere

(Also no worries about cooling hardware in winter, even compared to Toronto or Montreal)

Not sure how much HW in DeepMind is self-owned, or used "in the cloud" from GCP (or others), etc

It is actually almost on the flight path between San Francisco and London:

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SFO-LHR

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SFO-LHR,+sfo-yeg,+yeg-lhr

quintessential "fly over" country. Being a medium-ish sized metro area, Edmonton doesn't have a lot of direct international flights.