Google reveals plans for 1.1M square foot, 4 floor ‘Bay View’ campus near SF Bay | Hacker News Reader

Google reveals plans for 1.1M square foot, 4 floor ‘Bay View’ campus near SF Bay

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69 pointsohadfrankfurt48 comments

My only fear when I read about these campuses (Apple's 'spaceship' in particular) is the old adage about the 'curse of the new HQ'. See:

http://www.businessinsider.com/poorly-timed-headquarters-200...

I know it's a bit superstitious, but the basic idea is that when a company starts building temples to itself and its employees, that means their focus has shifted and their eye is getting off the ball.

I hope it's not the case with any of these companies, and I know there are plenty of counter-examples, but still, I think about this.

Interesting. Apple is doing 'great' but the stock market (1) disagrees so almost by definition it isn't doing good. Investors see clouds in the horizon and don't want to look at the $50 billion they might make in profit this year. Is Apple going to grow by 10 to 20% a year?

Google reported huge revenue increases and the stock is on fire but not because of new ventures or customers, they just added even more ads to the pages. That's not sustainable and when that happens it has a lot of falling to do. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog . Virtually all their money is still from ads.

Edit: 1. I think all this hype on stocks is a pump-and-dump operation, played by the big investment banks. "They" buy lots of shares, start the fire with $1000 price targets from their own analysts and when the price is high enough, they dump it, leaving some retail investor holding the bag. Google went from mid $500s to $800 in a few months

I don't think it's true that "the stock market disagrees that Apple is doing great". Apple is valued at over 400 billion dollars by the stock market. Maybe you mean that the price of Apple stock fell in some period t0 to t1, but that certainly doesn't mean the stock market is saying Apple is doing badly. That might simply mean the stock market updated its predictions on how Apple is going to do in the future.

Also, every stock has some degree of volatility. Take any stock and you'll find periods that the stock went up or down. In the case of Apple, if you look at the 5-year period finishing the increase has been 270%, way over the Nasdaq average.

> I think all this hype on stocks is a pump-and-dump operation, played by the big investment banks. "They" buy lots of shares, start the fire with $1000 price targets from their own analysts and when the price is high enough, they dump it, leaving some retail investor holding the bag.

Sorry, but this is naive. It's not feasible to manipulate the market over several months that way.

In most cases, the biggest shareholders are the company's founders and management, mutual and pension funds, and hedge funds. They would need to do a lot of (very illegal) conspiring in order to pull out that sort of thing. E.g. they would have to agree not to start selling off until a certain date.

Although illegal trading certainly does happen, that's usually via insider information (e.g. the investment banking division obtains secret information from Apple, and leaks it to the prop trading division). In this case, retail investors can get screwed, but so do all the banks and funds who aren't in the know.

If you're a retail investor, the way you lose money to brokers and market makers is typically by trading too much and thereby paying too many fees, and paying the spread too many times. Another way you lose money is when the company board & management screws you (e.g. by overpaying management, or by liberally issuing too much stock thereby diluting yours).

" That might simply mean the stock market updated its predictions on how Apple is going to do in the future.."

Exactly my point, Apple (PE of 10) is not going to do that well in the future, unlike Google with a PE of 24. At least that's how the market sees it right now. When AAPL was heading to $700 and many analysts got in line to call AAPL $1000 /share the market thought differently.

I think investors think Apple has done so well it now has nowhere to go but down. Something like 50% of Apple's revenue comes from the iPhone, in a market where you're only as good as your latest product and they only release one product a year.

True, even though China and India might save them for a while. But then carrier subsidies might cease here.

Maybe that's why they build temples like the OP said, they are on top of the world. The next likely move, however, is down.

Regarding your pump-and-dump theory, you lack understanding of some fundamental things about stocks. The huge stockholders are mutual funds and huge institutional investors who rarely sell their shares. Retail investors barely move the needle and own a very small % of outstanding shares.

I understand it well. If they (and founders) don't sell--and they can't easily without causing a major share drop--then the shares available are limited so the price goes up for those that want them.

If what you say was the case, why would investment banks spend all that money for researchers? Sure big financial investors and mutual funds do their own research up to a point? Do you think Citibank would buy based on Henry Blodget's 'research' http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2003-56.htm ?

For a minute I thought they might be revitalizing one of the poorer neighborhoods of SF; but no, 'Bay View' does not reference Bayview.

I don't think that would have been well received. Locals would have decried that SF gov 'gives in' to big corp at the expense of the local population (i.e. not creating jobs many locals could fill and that land that could be used for affordable housing was being bid up by big corp) and probably would have added that not many from the Bayview would have benefitted directly. That's SF politics. People want the clean baby without the bathwater.

Lowes+HomeDepot (HD started but bailed and Lowes took over) went thru some idiotic approval process to build their Bayshore location --about 12 or more years after Goodman Lumber closed its doors.

Offtopic, but is there any sane reason plastic bags are outlawed here. It really annoys me because it seems like a victory of naive idealism over common sense. Plastic bags are really useful.

Good question. They both have advantages and disadvantages. I think the main disadvantage of plastic is that few people re-use plastic bags --mainly because most plastic bags are designed to be disposed from the outset.

However, petroleum plastics are very durable (else there would not be such disdain for them fouling the enviro), so they could easily be more useful than paper bags. On the other hand, there are bio-sourced plastics (mainly from corn) which are very eco friendly, so I don't know why they'd be banned as well.

I think if SF would make a sensible decision, rather than a political decision, they'd just make people pay the 5 or 10 cents for any store-issued bag. The better option is to use bags made for re-use whether plastic, canvass, or other.

Plastic bags become pollution very easily. You accidentally drop one when it's windy and boom, it's trash circling through the city.

And yet the spelling and capitalization in the "official" Google statement at the bottom is "Bayview."

I was confused and disappointed, too. However, Google already has a (small) SF office, just south of Embarcaderro: https://plus.google.com/116282327849562022127

I was right there with you.

I wonder if it will have flood doors to contain the rising sea waters :-)

This is a pretty cool concept drawing. At one time there was a suggestion for Google to run a hovercraft or hydrofoil type ferry from the GooglePlex to San Francisco. This will make that easier!

That said I was expecting something to happen, I mean Apple has a spaceship, these guys needed to pupate out of the dead husk of SGI and spread their wings!

You joke, but our office in Dublin actually has flood doors ^^

Ok, that is just too awesome. Now if they had a submarine base behind them. That would be perfect. Maybe just a conference room that was decorated to be a secret submarine base, but still.

I can't understand why the big players like Facebook and Google are not building somewhere like South San Francisco. Most of the employees either live in San Francisco or want to, and the difference in real estate pricing could easily be offset by eliminating half the bus fleet.

Well for starters, it may help to realize that "Most of the employees either live in San Francisco or want to" is absolutely false. :)

I disagree, they're in an ideal location for people from both SF and down to San Jose and Fremont.

That gives their employees a whole lot more choice for housing and makes it more attractive. Every time I see a company that's in SF offering jobs I shudder at the travel time from the valley. It's wonderful if you've already got a place in SF but makes anyone think twice about joining a company when they consider the crazy living costs in SF.

None of those things are true for me. I shudder when I think about paying crazy bay area prices and then having to live in a typical valley suburb. I might as well move to Ohio and pay 1/4th the rent.

I don't think that statement that most of the employees either live in SF or want to is necessarily true and may only be true if you think of those under 30 or are recent college grads. Many folks want to own a home or raise a family outside of the city since it's very cost prohibitive to own or rent in San Francisco.

The argument against South San Francisco is that if you're going to build to be closer to San Francisco, then you should make it easily accessible to SF employees. That means it should be a MUNI ride away so you can get to it from anywhere in the city otherwise you're going to either have to drive or deal with a multi-transfer commute. I would suggest the DogPatch or Mission Bay given the access to CalTrain (as a connector to Mountain View HQ) and the availability of large swaths of warehouses or vacant land.

Original Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/02/exclusive-pre...

I wish Palantir would do a campus somewhere (which I suspect would be an awesome LOTR-themed campus).

That would drop Palo Alto real estate from $5-7 to maybe $3-5.

"As this project progresses, we’ll continue to work closely with NASA, the community and the City of Mountain View."

I must be confused, but what does any of this have to do with NASA?

NASA's Ames Research Center is just south of Google main campus, and is the owner of the wetlands this is likely to be built on. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffett_Federal_Airfield

Moffett Airfield [1], which is operated by NASA, is right next door.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffett_Federal_Airfield

The land the buildings are being built on are leased from NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2008/08_51AR....

The bayview land is here: http://goo.gl/maps/PY8UD

(Source: http://laserfiche.mountainview.gov/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=5...)

I believe the land the buildings will be on is being leased from NASA...

"what does any of this have to do with NASA?"

The singularity does not intend to remain Earthbound?

Does anybody know if the plan is to build atop the Shoreline Preserve in Mountain View? That seems to be the only large parcel of land that is both closer to the bay than Google already is and not currently occupied by other structures. Seems a shame to wipe out a hefty chunk of a nature preserve simply to satisfy a corporation's desire for self-idolatry.

The most beautiful office I've ever seen is that of ILM in the Presidio... about where Starfleet Academy is supposed to get built. ;) They have a "cafeteria" overlooking the Golden Gate, Bay, forest, etc.

I was about to correct you and state that Starfleet Academy was (will be?) located in Sausalito north of the Golden Gate Bridge... but I was wrong! <:)

Starfleet Academy's HQ was in the Presidio, but the Academy's training facility was in Sausalito.

Anybody else notice the three tents they have one of the grass covered roofs?

Easter egg or nice place to catch a nap?

Looking at the image I see 5 floors. Is counting done differently, the image not right or the headline wrong?

This is a misquote in the NW title; the original Vanity Fair article states "The new campus, which the company is calling Bay View, consists of nine roughly similar structures, most of which will be four stories high, and all of which are shaped like rectangles that have been bent in the middle."

Not sure if it applies in this instance but some customs have it so the ground floor is not counted and the second floor is referred to as the first and so on.

I'm British and that is what we do. But that is the label applied to each floor in the lift (some places omit the 13th floor label) and some have floors below ground. However that doesn't change how many floors a building has.

The article is written by an American residing in the US about a building in the US so using American conventions would seem appropriate.

They would still call it a two story building

Classic off-by-one error.

Maybe the first floor is mostly a parking garage

Can anyone explain why they would have to "work closely with NASA"? Is it a typo of the architect firm, NBBJ?

This is the distance between Google's HQ and Moffett Airfield / Ames Research (both NASA properties):

https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Unknown+road&daddr=Cr...

It's likely that the land that Google is planning on expanding onto is either owned by NASA or adjacent to their facility.

They are probably planning for their NASA merger/acquisition.

NASA owns a lot of the land around Moffett, near the proposed location

Maybe they'll finally afford private offices then... So that engineers won't work full day with headphones.

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