
'Google go home': the Berlin neighbourhood fighting off a tech giant - seu
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/09/fuck-off-google-the-berlin-neighbourhood-fighting-off-a-tech-giant-kreuzberg
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mhomde
I think Berlins "Poor but happy" times are fast coming to an end. Rents have
been rising quickly the last few years and tech companies and startups
becoming more prevalent. Heck, Neukölln went from being a cheap alternative to
being as trendy and expensive as Kreuzberg.

Berlin kinda, from what I understand, enjoyed it's special culture much
because it wasn't an industrial city and lacked an large international
airport, but cheap rent, international vibe and fun hipster values seems like
the perfect void for tech to move into now that rents and prices in the usual
"big cities" have gone through the roof. I can also imagine cities like
Amsterdam and Berlin getting some Brexit escapees.

Mark my words, Berlin will be Europe's Silicon Valley within a few years.

~~~
saintPirelli
No way. Europe's Silicon Valley will establish in Eastern Europe, where living
is cheaper and governments are more willing to ease up on regulations to
accomodate the flexible start-up employer-employee relationships. Warsaw,
Sophia, Tallinn, those are the spots to keep an eye out for.

~~~
mstade
Speaking of Estonia, I was at their embassy in Stockholm last fall and they
were pushing hard for Tallinn as the next European capital of tech. Nearly
every conversation you had with them, regardless of topic, would somehow
gravitate toward how great Estonia is to set up a tech shop. Whether because
of cheap real estate or the quality of their work force, or the prevalence of
craft beer – it was all just a great place to be.

Frankly I kind of bought it. I'm going to visit this summer.

~~~
piva00
Honestly speaking, Tallinn is a boring place. Might be good for business but I
don't see it as attractive for people willing to move, maybe in the short-term
for a job but it's not a place I'd see many settling in.

Go visit it anyway, that's, of course, just my impression, but even living in
Stockholm (a place I consider a bit boring for my standards of big city life)
I found Tallinn very very dull.

~~~
gaius
Tallinn is massively more fun than Helsinki

~~~
piva00
Haha, that I really can't disagree with.

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arximboldi
I live in the neighbourhood, very close to where the "campus" is being built.
I understand that Google has a lot of symbolic value in the protests, but I
don't think that it actually will have such an impact. Paul-linke-ufer is
already full of startups and relatively affluent american hipsters flood the
caffes in the hood. That is also ok, I guess, (like UFO361 says hahaha),
people in the end can live wherever they want. But what is not ok is the
cartel-like tactics that Berliner landlords use to rise rents. In Germany
people tend to not own flats, but this means many buildings are owned by big
companies with lots of pressure power when they want to do mass rent
increases. They do really shady things like playing with the WBS (social
housing) rules against the renters, like with these renters in Maybachufer:
[https://www.neues-deutschland.de/artikel/1086567.falsches-
sp...](https://www.neues-deutschland.de/artikel/1086567.falsches-spiel-am-
maybachufer.html) The rents went up 17% last year in and this rate is
increasing every year. This is really worrying and I hope the city becomes
serious about it.

~~~
sneak
Paul-Lincke-Ufer was my first flat in Berlin, in 2008. A bedroom then went for
€400/mo, and that was considered high then. Now I imagine it is 3-4x that.

~~~
biztos
I had a tiny studio with coal heating on Maybachufer in 1996 for under 200 DM
(!) per month, "warm" (i.e. with the coal it was about 200).

But even back then: a single company owned the building, and kicked everyone
out so they could renovate and get their gentrification bonus. To help
motivate the older residents they started the exceptionally noisy renovation
work at 6am every day.

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dvfjsdhgfv
I always find it amusing that American companies, be it Amazon or Google, are
surprised that people don't want them here. They seem to really believe people
love them, whereas in fact people use them because they have to, and put up
with problems caused by them also because they have to.

~~~
dgellow
I don't think that anyone is surprised here. The quote is:

> I think Google were surprised that they came up against opposition,” says
> Stefan Klein, a local activist with the GloReiche neighbourhood group at one
> of their twice-weekly open sessions.

So, one activist thinks that Google is surprised (which sounds quite naive
IMHO).

Then later in the article:

> A Google spokesman in Berlin says that the company has spoken to residents
> about their concerns and is incorporating their feedback into its plans. “We
> live in Berlin ourselves, we understand the concerns of neighbours about
> gentrification and know how Kreuzberg has been developing in recent years.”

~~~
icebraining
I'm not saying Google was surprised, but a spokesperson would have to be
pretty poor at their job if they admitted they were caught off-guard.

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jpatokal
One important thing that's not at all clear from the article: this is _not_ a
campus for Google employees a la Googleplex, but a capital-C Campus run by
Google for Entrepreneurs, meaning basically a coworking space/startup
incubator that happens to be run by Google. So even if it's built, the people
working there won't be Googlers, but random startup people in Berlin.

[https://www.googleforentrepreneurs.com/campuses/](https://www.googleforentrepreneurs.com/campuses/)

~~~
marssaxman
Thanks! That was _really_ not clear in the article, and after their list of
existing Google campuses, I wondered what had happened to Zurich and Sydney...

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tnolet
I live in this neighbourhood and my office is on the same street, one block
from the new campus. The area is nice and lively, so I get people want an
office there (hell, I did the same!). But Google has the means to positively
impact the less hip, more strugling parts of Berlin. I bet people would
welcome them with open arms in Marzhan or Wedding.

~~~
biztos
Yes, but would the people Google wants to hire want to work in Marzahn or
Wedding?

~~~
erikb
If Google is there, they would. And if not Berlin is one of the few cities on
this planet where people actually live in the city center and drive outside
for work.

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haywirez
I live right in the middle of this and have been been collecting photos of
posters and other relics - which I always promptly send to my friend now
working at Google (elsewhere). The neighbourhood is definitely changing. A key
fact is that the protests stem from the anarchist / squatter scene that is
based literally next block.

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kerng
[https://fuckoffgoogle.de/](https://fuckoffgoogle.de/)

There is now a website even.

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blackbrokkoli
It kinda seems like the protestors build their arguments around the fact that
they don't like Google, not vice versa.

Also it's amusing how the article struggles with "Umspannwerk"

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sparrc
Obviously they can oppose all they want, but the fact of the matter is that
most people are going to love the jobs and opportunities it will bring.
Whether that is high-paying jobs in engineering or management, middle-paying
in hospitality, construction, renovation, or lower-paying in
cleaning/janitorial.

At least it's my perspective that these sorts of neighbourhood changes are
impossible to prevent. Does anyone know of any examples otherwise?

~~~
sykh
Kreuzberg is different. It’s a traditionally leftist district. Every May Day
there are clashes with police. At least when I lived there. It may eventually
change but the people there are not as money focused. They are more culture
focused in the sense of wanting local business over large corporations. Most
people there are not going to love the accompanying jobs. Some jobs aren’t
worth the cost. Some are.

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dgellow
The article makes it sound really bigger than it is. From what I experienced
the opposition is quite small, signs anti-google are only visible in a few
specific locations in one neighborhood, and in general only a few people are
vocal against it (mostly anarchists or anti capitalists activists). I would
expect some level of opposition from a fringe of the population in any city
where Google or other tech giants want to open offices.

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mpweiher
"Google campus will only have 6-10 employees"

Kreuzberg is...special.

~~~
mightyranger57
Why would they build a whole campus just for 10 employees?

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sneak
Because lots of Google employees travel for a significant amount of their time
and many visit Berlin often.

~~~
mightyranger57
But to me, campus sounds like something that can host at least 500 to 1000
people. So Google should communicate properly that they are building a private
co-working space, not a real campus

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tonyjstark
As a Berliner, I find it hard to understand the resistance. On the one hand
everybody cries out here about the rising rent and the stagnating wages and on
the other hand there is this opposition against bigger companies (e. g. Google
or big media companies at the Spree). Gentrification will happen anyway
because of investors buying off apartments, houses or complete blocks. Berlin
has one of the highest tax on purchasing housing space in Germany which is
really bad for people buying apartments but doesn't matter for investors that
buy as a business since they can get them partially back with their tax
returns (not possible if you use the space yourself instead of renting it
out).

Big companies would give the market some incentive to raise the wages, which I
know is at first bad for small startups but also attracts so much talent that
it will balance out at some point (I hope).

I guess this is part of the Berlin culture, being innovative and free minded
but also being completely against any change. Only 10 waking minutes away from
the future Google campus there is this big fight about reworking the riverside
of the Landwehrkanal which should make it accessible for Wheelchairs and baby
strollers as well as bikes but people are protesting, living in one of the
best appartments with still cheap rent because of their old contracts. Before
that there was this even bigger fight about a small part of the old Tempelhof
airport area. The city planned to build houses and office space there. I can't
imagine any other city (with a housing crisis) where people would oppose to
this. The fear was that a nature reservation area would suffer which according
to plan would have been not be the case.

Probably it's a matter of view points, there are the new economy workers like
myself waiting for companies to settle in Berlin (not so many there because of
the cities history) and then there is the other side with people in really low
paying jobs that fear exclusion, totally valid. I don't have numbers but I
could imagine that Berlin as quite a bit discrepancy between low and high
income households with quite many on the lower end because it has so few big
industries.

Cheap Berlin only exists in some parts and mainly myths. Friends of mine pay
the same rent in Munich for comparable apartments while going out can be
cheaper in Berlin but only if you know where to go, the beer price is mostly
the same, food depends. The wages are much lower in Berlin, for developers
it's at junior entry at around 10.000€ per year less.

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platzhirsch
As a Berliner I find this hideous. There are so many high end work spaces in
Berlin which push the rents anyway. This is mostly invisible to the angry mob
but with Google they have a fall guy. This is completely distracting from the
underlying structural problems.

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obelix_
ces allemands sont fous

~~~
baud147258
The right way to say that would be :

"Ils sont fous ces Goths"

