I thought the activists are against this because 'Google is building a company town!' Shouldn't they be happy that Google has ended the deal? Now no one gets to live in houses.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/21/googles-80-acre-san-jose-meg...
> razed a bunch of houses that people were living in to build more office buildings
that doesn't sound unproductive or vacant to me?
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3292089,-121.9010776,3a,70.8...
I work at Google, but more importantly, I'm a citizen living in Santa Clara county and I really really don't support Govt forced evictions (maybe I'm next).
I'm hoping it's either not true, or those families received generous sums of money as part of the deal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
"Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005),[1] was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 5–4, that the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development does not violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."
...
"The final cost to the city and state for the purchase and bulldozing of the formerly privately held property was $78 million. The promised 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues had not materialized. As of 2021, the area remains an empty lot."
It's unclear to me from the article just how far this got, but if it already reached the point of tearing down existing buildings, let alone starting to build new ones, and then stopped, that's definitely bad.
Even if it didn't get to that point, it may very well have had a negative effect on the area simply due to Google's (money's) outsized influence: anyone else who might have chosen to do something with the area would've turned away, for instance, and it might have affected property values as well.
And I'm in an industry that makes essential, life-saving products. Can't imagine what it's like in big tech.