Sometimes it seems like Google is trying to take over the world. For the residents of the Californian town of Mountain View, this feeling has become a reality ..
In early 2014, a contract was signed to create Google's own airport to the west of Googleplex, which will include a hangar that can accommodate Hindenburg. But the lease of the historic federal airfield Moffett is not needed by the company to build a hangar. Google is building robots and automated cars in parallel, as well as buying up real estate in large quantities, and Moffett Airfield could be the final point allowing the company to transform the city according to its own vision.
In 1990, Google rented its first Mountain View office at 2400 Bayshore Parkway, which employed a little less than fifty people. Fifteen years later, the company will become the city's largest employer. Despite the fact that the city has representative offices Microsoft, Symantec, Intuit and LinkedIn, they pale in comparison with the presence of Google: in 2013, the company accepted 9.7% of the city's working population into its ranks and owned 10.7% taxable property. In other words, Google represented 10% of the town that year. And the share is increasing.
Google Campus Project in Bay View
Not a cash cow
The aforementioned growth would not be perceived with such a degree of negativity if Google offered something more than higher property values. City Councilor Mike Kasperzak is generally proud to call Google a neighbor, but does not see the company's presence in the city as a source of economic growth. Google's revenue from advertising or search sales, as well as free meals for employees, are tax-free. “I don’t want the company to close its offices in the city, but it’s not the cash cow it is widely believed to be,” says Kasperzak.
Meanwhile, Google is generating a huge stream of traffic. As of 2014, Google owns or leases virtually every office building north of Highway 101, in an area known as Bayshore. This 'island' geographic location is difficult to overestimate: Highway 101 is the main transport artery connecting Mountain View to the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area and separating North Bayshore personnel from their homes. By design, there are practically no residential buildings in this area, so all traffic on the way to work at Google and back goes through Highway 101. As the company grows, traffic becomes a big problem. “There is a parking problem,” explains City Councilor Jacques Sigel. “I live in a side street, and it so happens that there is no way to move from the driveway of the house onto the road, to such an extent everything is packed with cars.”
However, Google is not going to stop there. As of June 2013, the company has recruited 11,332 employees in Mountain View, but at the same time told the city council that it hopes to add an additional 344,000 square meters to its territory as part of its newest urban zoning project, which, by conservative estimates, will be enough for the final doubling of the workforce to 24,000 people. And this is without taking into account any other acquisitions within the city that the company is quite capable of making. To Google's credit, in 2012 only 52% of the company's employees traveled to work alone, but even that percentage of 24,000 is appalling, given that the roads in Mountain View are already overcrowded.
Google declined to officially comment on the situation, but said: “Google and more than 3,000 employees consider Mountain View to be their home, and we currently see no other alternatives. No matter what happens in the future, we are firmly committed to being good neighbors for the rest of the urban community and the natural environment. One of our initiatives frees the roads from 5,000 cars every day, and thousands of our employees choose bicycles as their means of transportation. '
In 2007, when Google swiftly bought nearly a quarter of the local office space, some of the residents were already worried. “I’m afraid we’ll become a city of the same company,” a local resident said in an interview with Silicone Valley Business Journal, although a city councilor praised Google for reviving the area. And as early as 2009, Google's transportation plan predicted a daunting prospect of traffic congestion that Mountain View could face in the next ten years if growth was not controlled.
Bumping foreheads
Such concerns were not ignored. According to Daniel DeBolt, a journalist who has followed the situation for nearly a decade, the city council has repeatedly protested against Google's ambitions. The board did not approve of Google's housing and hotel proposals, and thwarted attempts to start any construction in the North Bayshore area. Transportation is one of the council's concerns, but the environment is not the least of the organ's activities: there are concerns that such activities will harm the rabbit owl and other species at the North Bayshore Wildlife Refuge.
As of early 2014, the council was leaning towards allowing Google to redevelop existing offices in the center of the neighborhood or near the highway and erect taller and more closely spaced buildings, and in return force the company to reduce the area of the office stock near the reserve. In terms of transportation, the city plans to improve walking and bike lanes and entrust the non-profit Transportation Profit Association, which includes Google, Samsung and Intuit, to coordinate a dedicated transportation service for people in the area.
But Google didn't want to risk its potential growth to please the city's authorities. In the framework of the meeting held on January 22, 2013, Google's vice president for real estate David Radcliffe issued a kind of ultimatum to the city council. “We can grow by increasing the size and density of existing buildings, or we can grow, gradually taking over neighboring business parks and communities,” he said, making it clear that the first option is more preferable for the company. “A key necessity for our success is our people working together in close proximity, shoulder to shoulder.”
If this threat were real, then Google could implement it in the next year. The company has bought or leased about 185,000 square meters of land, including huge tracts to the south, west and east of the company's traditional hideout in North Bayshore. “In terms of appetite for the company, 2013 has been an amazing year,” says Silicon Valley Bisuness Journal reporter Nathan Donato-Weinstein, whose detailed research on real estate transactions contributed to this story. And then it came to Moffett airfield.
Google's lease of four square kilometers of Moffett Airfield is puzzling at first. According to the deputy director of NASA research center Deborah Feng, Google cannot do everything it wants in this territory. The company will need to not only update old hangars, but also maintain a real airport for use by the California Air Force or other government agencies. “In their hangars, they can do whatever they want, provided that the activity is carried out in a legal field,” Feng explains, adding that Google can also use airspace commensurate with the airfield. Be that as it may, a spokesman for the Federal Air Transport Agency told us that the company will not be able to do anything in this airspace – for example, test drones – without official permission. Feng argues that Google will use the hangars as testing grounds for research and development, but outside the hangars, the company is limited to a relatively small area of 8,000 square meters.
The need for Moffett Airfield only begins to make sense in the context of Google's overall design. In 2008, Google leased 42 acres of land from NASA at the northwest end of the airfield and 9 acres at the east end of Charleston Road, and the idea was soon brought up to build futuristic new dorms on these sites to counter Googleplex. It was then proposed to build a bridge over the stream separating the large cluster of Google buildings at North Bayshore from the airfield. Add to this the Palo Alto site purchased by Google and another bridge between the site and Mountain View, and soon Google will have a virtually unified property chain linking Palo Alto, Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Having the ability to move freely between these areas reduces the company's dependence on Highway 101. And if company employees were placed in government houses, they could work, eat at the company's cafes and return home without leaving the peculiar “Google Island”.
Although Mountain View has not stopped construction at North Bayshore, the city has no jurisdiction over federal land, and it just so happens that the land is already zoned to accommodate up to five thousand people. When Google initially announced NASA's 'Bay View' lease in 2008, they wrote that housing would be part of the plan. There were also rumors that Google would also sublet about 2,000 planned housing units from an educational enterprise University Associates, which is building a new campus on nearby NASA land.
The bridge is too far
There is only one problem: the city will prevent Google from building a bridge to the airfield. “We directly denied them this,” recalls councilor Jacques Sigel. “This is out of the question.” In this controversial move, the city council scrapped the idea for environmental reasons, preventing Google from conducting independent research on the potential for environmental damage. In his defense, Sigel said that the result of such research inevitably only becomes the connivance of the company that pays the bills. “If they don't get the results they want, they’re not hired anymore. I'm not sure about their honesty. '
But if Google expands through an airfield without such a bridge, then it will lead to even greater transport problems. By purchasing thousands of square meters of real estate in and outside the city and developing even more real estate on federal soil, Google is effectively forcing the city to choose between a nature-friendly status quo and corporate growth. Mountain View can't do anything. Kasperzak: 'Our council believes in the free market. We're not going to prohibit companies from buying land. '
Also, a spokesperson for the council believes that Google will do the right thing with the dreaded traffic problem if given permission. “We can create a more efficient and environmentally friendly transportation system if we let these companies build, but if we fight them at every step, we will not get what we want. Companies know what it takes to keep their employees happy, and it works. Employees are motivated to try and find solutions. ' However, Sigel is worried about the possibility of the city losing its identity and character due to the growth of Google. “These homes have a 50% turnover rate per year,” says Seigel, referring to the widespread debate that the city should build more rental housing because of the higher demand for it. “This means that half of those who live here now will move out by next year. The community is happy, isn't it? ' – Sigel jokes.
After eight years of research, Daniel DeBolt also fears the disappearance of the local community. “The community is being replaced by people who spend most of their day on the Google campus without making a meaningful contribution to the rest of civil society.” DeBolt accepts staff exceptions and believes there must be some sacrifice to build housing as a primary goal.
More likely, Google will get what it wants. By the end of 2014, the term of office of the conservative majority of the council expired and even Sigel believes that the bridge to the airfield will appear with the appearance of the 'right people' on the council. “My biggest fear is Mountain View’s transformation into Googleville, the corporation-controlled city where most of its employees live, akin to one of the old factory towns on the east coast, where everything and everyone is controlled by a city-forming enterprise. I've been living here for a long time. I remember when Lockheed employed 35,000 people. I remember 39 SGI buildings in the North Bayshore area. I'm not saying that Google will disappear somewhere, but history shows that things can change. Anyone in India, China or Pakistan can invent better or cheaper technology .. and everything here will fall into disrepair. You need to create a city for the future, and not in accordance with fleeting trends. I don’t want to create a city that its current residents no longer want to live in. '
Original article by Sean Hollister
Elir: one of the most interesting, in my opinion, articles that came across to me during the year of work on the column. The “Corporation of Good” here is firmly bending its line, gradually gaining more and more weight in a modest town. The positive aspects of this process are the transformation of the city and its infrastructure, as well as providing Google with an excellent testing ground for visual testing of its products, be it an operating system, communications, cars with automatic control, etc. However, the fears of residents and members of the city council are understandable, because without Google they will have to start all over again, so mutually beneficial coexistence will be the right way out. It would be interesting to look at the implementation of such a 'project' in our country, but on condition that the residents of such Yandexburg or Vimpelkomsk would not become victims of the company's appetites, but would receive a clear infrastructure, jobs and social guarantees.
I would also like to thank all the readers of the column for their active participation in the discussion of the proposed topics, which is why the Arbor appears again on the pages of the site. Thank you!