

Google reveals plans for 1.1M square foot, 4 floor ‘Bay View’ campus near SF Bay - ohadfrankfurt
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/02/22/google-reveals-plans-for-1-1m-square-foot-4-floor-bay-view-campus-near-san-francisco-bay/?utm_source=Twitter&awesm=tnw.to_j0brb&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus

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nlh
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...](http://www.businessinsider.com/poorly-timed-
headquarters-2009-11?op=1)

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.

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OGinparadise
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

~~~
nandemo
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).

~~~
OGinparadise
" 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.

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

~~~
mc32
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.

~~~
soup10
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.

~~~
mc32
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.

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ChuckMcM
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!

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

~~~
ChuckMcM
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.

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dsl
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.

~~~
c4urself
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.

~~~
drstewart
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.

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brudgers
Original Source: [http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/02/exclusive-
pre...](http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/02/exclusive-preview-
googleplex)

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rdl
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.

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nthitz
"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?

~~~
GauntletWizard
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>

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emelski
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.

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mixmastamyk
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.

~~~
cpeterso
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.

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

Easter egg or nice place to catch a nap?

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

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pests
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.

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rogerbinns
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.

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

~~~
mikeyouse
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...](https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Unknown+road&daddr=Crittenden+Ln&hl=en&sll=37.424366,-122.06244&sspn=0.021471,0.051155&geocode=FXkJOwIdE2O5-A%3BFfYOOwId6Fm5-A&dirflg=w&mra=dme&mrsp=0&sz=15&t=m&z=15)

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

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

