

Google Opens London Campus  - pmjoyce
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17548128

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fpp
As one of the founders of a new IT start-up in London I can certainly assure
everyone that London again has a lot that's positive for creating new
companies here.

But this thriving climate of innovation, creativity and new companies is
mostly created by those who are part of that group. It's the people in these
IT companies, the large group of creative agencies long established in London
and those around these groups, those who create things and less by politics or
underlying infrastructure. This in itself can be seen as good, but also as
endangered when you look at longer term agendas and recent actions by UK
politics.

Our biggest concerns currently are actually the stands of UK politics on ACTA,
PIPA, their implementations and European counterparts. Instead of "cruising
with the flow" the UK should - like with the financial industry - take up this
opportunity and safeguard this newly growing and fast driving IT industry and
foster its potential by laws that allow for innovation.

One should not forget those who create new innovative solutions - in
particular with disruptive solutions - will always be considered as enemies or
someone to "lobby against" by those established players who have stopped
innovating (or innovating themselves).

Innovation always also means overstepping lines and creating new things by
throwing out established assumptions. Over time those become the hurdles the
next generations of innovators have to overcome.

We are looking forward to see some of the promises made by UK politicians with
regards to London as a tech-hub actually being enacted and this group of young
companies protected against malevolent attempts to stifle that growth by
established influential(mostly Non-UK)companies that seemingly still continue
to believe that their business models from the last century that are sometimes
closer to extortion than doing actual business are sustainable by just "paying
the right people".

We actually have to come back to a climate and understanding in politics that
values the creation of new things similar to the times when the UK was the
foremost industrialised nation - and this is quite a while ago.

In completely unrelated news ;-) did you know that you have to wait up to six
weeks in London to get a new telephone line (re)-connected thanks to the years
of driving up "Shareholder value" with BT (and less spending on engineering or
reducing engineering staff by thousands).

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dav-id
If I was a person from outside of the UK and looking to setup a business in
the UK I would absolutely not choose London as my base! I understand all of
the reasons in favour of London but I think there are better alternatives.
London is full of the type of people who like to make a lot of noise but get
little done, costs are extortionate and you can get most of the benefit of
London from outside.

My personal choices would be a city along one of the major rail routes into
London or one of the major University cities. So they would be Bath, Bristol,
Oxford, Cambridge and perhaps Birmingham / Warwick. In fact most of these
cities have their own start up friendly environments that are linked with the
universities and plenty of VC and PE firms in those cities. All of which are
less expensive and much more welcoming and friendly places to be, less ego
too!

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untog
_So they would be Bath, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge and perhaps Birmingham /
Warwick._

As someone who grew up in Bath (and spent a lot of time in Bristol), let me
tell you: you're going to have a very hard time convincing people to move to
those cities. There really isn't much going on there.

London might be where people "make a lot of noise but get little done"
(citation needed) but it's also the central hub of business, commerce and
transport in the country. You can apply everything you just said to New York
and Silicon Valley, yet they remain the top places to set up a business in the
USA. There are very good reasons for that.

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NickPollard
London is certainly a level above every other city in the UK, but as a
graduate of Bristol University it's definitely one of the few places in the UK
I'd consider living outside London, and seems like it has a lot going for it
for the startup crowd. A lot of creative businesses, good culture, youthful,
energetic, but still big enough to be interesting and close enough to London
for when it's needed.

The University of Bristol is very keen on entrepreneurship too, especially the
Engineering + CompSci departments - they're responsible for getting me
interested in the whole thing in the first place!

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johngunderman
The title is a bit misleading. The campus is not "for Google", but rather a
space for start-ups. Only the building is owned by Google.

On a side note, the bear looks like one of the United Buddy Bears from the
original Berlin collection. I'm not entirely sure how they got one, but it's
an awesome thing to have around. Clearly it's being put to good use, given the
Tardis decorating its arm :)

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TapaJob
The current 'London' Situation is starting to annoy alot of people. The
Olympics is a classic example of an event that is for the entire UK but most
of the north (inc. Scotland) and west (including Wales and Ireland off the
coast of England) will not benefit. Take a look at this image of a map of the
events:

<http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/395/olym.png>

The UK has one of the largest number of Football Clubs in the world. Every
Major City and Town has a Football Club and the smaller towns have Rugby
Stadiums. Some cities have BOTH. Leicester, for example, has The Tigers Rugby
Statium a stones throw from the King Power Football Stadium.

Why are these cities not benefiting from such a hugh event and why is the
Govenment not investing in the creation of Tech Campus's in all major cities
in the UK?

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cpeterso
Mozilla recently opened a London office, too:

[http://thenextweb.com/uk/2012/03/23/a-look-inside-
mozillas-n...](http://thenextweb.com/uk/2012/03/23/a-look-inside-mozillas-new-
london-co-working-space/)

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/codepo8/sets/72157629224696636/>

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muckmot
If Europe, in particular the UK, can pass more anti-copyright and tech-
friendly laws, wouldn't it be a no-brainer for most startups/companies to move
there?

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excuse-me
But a bit of a problem for a company whose business model is based on copying
everything online and worrying about the authors later.

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itsmequinn
Since this it's a campus in the UK, it should really read, "Google Open London
Campus".

~~~
stevejalim
No, companies are singular in UK English

