Facebook Buys Old Sun Campus in Menlo Park | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Buys Old Sun Campus in Menlo Park

techcrunch.com

39 pointssiculars34 comments

Clarification on the Twitter move: Its Brisbane, CA not Brisbane, Australia which for some reason came to my mind first :).

http://lnkd.in/kJZaxy

Sheesh, everyone knows that! Just like the real Paris is in Texas, Madrid is in New Mexico, Amsterdam is in New York, and London is in Ohio. Those Europeans couldn't think of original names for their cities so they stole ours.

I didn't realize the Sun campus was empty.

It's a strange place. Not walking distance to anything, not train adjacent, not school adjacent, .... The buildings are pretty though.

It's the perfect location for a middle-aged company to become isolated and slip into irrelevance.

Are you suggesting that Facebook is going to become isolated and slip into irrelevance, or stating that Sun did?

It's a strange place. Not walking distance to anything, not train adjacent, not school adjacent, .... The buildings are pretty though.

I haven't been to the Sun campus, but does the Google campus in Mountain View not share these traits?

That did cross my mind. Differences: google is right off the interstate, it's attached to a concert venue/park/golf course/bike trails/running trails, it's walking distance to dozens of other tech companies, and it's next to downtown mountain view.

So, google still comes out ahead.

"Next to downtown Mountain View" is giving it too much credit -- the Googleplex is two miles from downtown, and is nigh-unwalkable. But it is a matter of degrees -- Google's location is bad but the Sun campus's location is awful.

Very true. In my brain, Google is topologically closer to downtown MV than the Sun campus is to any vestige of civilization.

There's an in-n-out, if that makes any difference. Plus, you can bike to the caltrain station if need be.

I doubt real estate choices had anything to do with Sun's demise.

At least at one point facebook gave it's employees a bonus for living close to work. Wonder if will (does?) still exist.

If so I wonder if maybe they could start to revitalize the East Menlo Park area.

But it is close to TechShop!

Assuming they mean this location:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.481601,-122.148657&z=1...

I worked near there around 2002 and was recently pleased to see that local business has really expanded since then. I dare say you could actually walk to a burrito or coffee now.

As a bonus, it's in the part of "Menlo Park" that's basically East Palo Alto. Driving around there in the evening wasn't something I relished. Maybe the Ikea has improved things, though...

SHDH was there a couple years ago, and it was a great venue. Maybe facebook will get brave enough to have a SHDH on its turf one of these days.

We'd be more than happy to host a SHDH. Shoot me an email at dr@fb.com.

Email on the way!

Allow me to say this is why I love HN. :-)

Just because I'm sure at least one other person won't know the acronym, but I think SHDH is Supper Happy Dev House.

A requiem for the engineering dream.

Next we will hear that HP is using VAX as the name of new printer ink

One dream exits, another dream enters.

Unsentimental redeployment of resources to newer, more promising ventures is one of Silicon Valley's competitive strengths.

Indeed - Sun stopped caring in the early 2000s. They were a great company once, and had great hardware, a great Unix, and great ideas about networked computing. But by the time they died, they had an ancient userspace with a nifty filesystem and kernel debugging tool, slow hardware, and didn't have the cash or skills to execute their big concept ideas.

One dream exits, another dream enters.

yes, engineering dream exits and and social marketing one enters...

I still find it hard to believe that a website with no income whose sole purpose is to allow you to throw virtual sheep at your friends can have more value than all the real engineering companies in America put together - at least for any sane definition of value!

You're simultaneously believing the hype about Facebook's valuation while discounting its revenue potential. With different assumptions I suppose one could arrive at a different conclusion.

It's difficult to see a revenue potential that justifies a $50Bn valuation. There are 2Bn internet users at the most generous estimate - for half of those $1 is a large amount of money.

It's difficult to see how advertisers are going to extract enough value from the other half to make paying $50 to Facebook for each of them likely. When even a the most expensive superbowl commercial only costs 3c/viewer.

> Next we will hear that HP is using VAX as the name of new printer ink

They once used Apollo as the name for a line of cheap printers...

BTW, is there any emulator capable of booting Domain/OS?

They used that name because HP bought Apollo Computers in the late 80s.

I know. They also bought the name VAX, along with Compaq...

I have heard this place referred to as "Sun Quentin"

"...Facebook plans to move all operations to Menlo Park by the end of the year."

Does that mean other offices are closing?

No, I think this means they're going to keep expanding like crazy.

Interesting, two companies that were very innovative in their time, Sun and Silicon Graphics had their campuses bought by behemoths who are now big rivals. Both campuses are designed very nice and innovative, e.g. Silicon Graphics' slanted buildings. I remember going there for free Tuesday dinner for employee families. Good old times.

to the "old" Sun Menlo Park guys - any ideas what ghosts will be haunting Facebookers there? :)))

sorry, couldn't resist - "Social network is a computer".

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