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Google and LinkedIn announce massive land swap
- option_greek 10y agoWow. That sounds like a lot of land. I'm curious as to why does Linkedin require so much space.
- Bahamut 10y agoLinkedIn has roughly 10k employees - they're in an arms race for office space with Google and Apple in the area, but it sounds like this agreement should resolve most of the issues with Google and LinkedIn. Being that LinkedIn's headquarters is currently blocks away from the Googleplex and considering Google's dominance of the land north of the 101, it has left LinkedIn with little room to grow in its main cluster of buildings, and so it has been forced to look in Sunnyvale. Unfortunately, Apple has also expanded quite significantly into Sunnyvale in search of more land.
- omellet 10y agoWhy don't they just build taller buildings?
- drewg123 10y agoThis is the Bay Area. Nobody can build properly tall buildings. It would shatter the illusion that its still 1968.
- winter_blue 10y agoWhat restricts someone from constructing a tall building? If I buy a piece of land, and it's my property, I can do whatever I what with it right? Who can stop me from constructing a tall building on my own property? The United States is a free country right? I assume a free country respects property owner's freedom to whatever[1] they want with their land? [1] Of course excluding actions would cause significant harm to one's neighbors, like environmental pollution.
- Alupis 10y ago> What restricts someone from constructing a tall building? The insane laws of the bay area might restrict you, for starters.
- Johnny555 10y agoOf course excluding actions would cause harm to their neighbors with their actions. What would you call it when your new 50 story building leaves neighboring properties in permanent shadow, or get in the way of their previous panoramic views of the bay?
- outworlder 10y ago> If I buy a piece of land, and it's my property, I can do whatever I what with it right? No. > The United States is a free country right? Nothing to do with the United States. Most countries have zoning laws.
- winter_blue 10y agoI was actually asking that question in a rhetorical sense. I'm well aware of zoning laws. I think when they're taken too far, they impinge on personal liberty. There are localities that mandate that every house be painted the same color. The Bay Area zoning laws benefit a few (the landlords) at great cost to everyone else who lives there, and stunts the growth of the regional economy. (If taller building were allowed and property prices were more sane, there would be more companies and more people, thus leading to economic growth). I think what we need is a constitutional limit on state power in the United States. The Tenth Amendment[1] and the Enumerated Powers Clause[2] limit federal overreach, but there is no analogous limit on state power in the U.S. Constitution. The states' powers are not enumerated, well-defined or limited in any way, and states are free to legislate on almost anything (unless it infringes on an enumerated right of the people or a right covered under Ninth Amendment[3]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_powers [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_... -- "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
- telotortium 10y agoThe land they just gave to Google was going to be used for more buildings. I doubt they were going to build skyscrapers, nor could they with the amount of additional parking space that would be needed. The North Bayshore area isn't really accessible except by highways, and even those are pretty much at capacity - in fact, the city council has approved only a limited amount of office space due to the strain on transportation infrastructure.
- trhway 10y ago>nor could they with the amount of additional parking space that would be needed. you can build parking deep under ground. Heck, giving the tendency for the quality of offices, you can build underground office floors too :)
- Tyr42 10y agoGeology has to be better. It'd flood.
- trhway 10y agouse higher (river dam / tunnel) grade concrete right from the bedrock.
- telotortium 10y agoThe capacity of the roads and highways that feed the campus is more of an issue.
- trhway 10y agoGiving the stakes, Google probably would build an additional on/off ramp and may be an additional lane on 101 themselves if permitted :)
- mtviewdave 10y agoIndeed, there's been discussion about connecting Moffett Blvd to the North Bayshore neighborhood a new bridge over the creek that would connect to La Avenida. And creating a spur of the Light Rail system into the neighborhood as well.
- debeggar 10y agoZoning issues, and also people not willing to shed the suburban feel. An article I read sometime ago: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-housing-is-so-expensive-in-san-francisco-2014-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-housing-is-so-expensive-i...
- serge2k 10y agoIn other words, NIMBY asshats unwilling to accept progress.
- bluedino 10y agoThe citizens of Mountain View want nothing to do with tall buildings. They only have a handful that are over 5 stories. A 12-story building was planned back in 2012 and they almost had a protest over it. The name of the town is 'Mountain View' and not 'city skyline view', after all.
- mc32 10y agoTrue, but it's also not "Bay View". Any buildings on the other side of 101, which is not residential, would block view to mudflats and salt ponds...
- krschultz 10y agoThis shocked me the first time I went out to SV. I thought the bay would be a deep body of water with a shoreline, and it's basically a mud flat / salt factory. Really disappointing. Many cities built along rivers have better water views & access.
- karma_vaccum123 10y agoThe Bay in the area in question is bounded by landfills and water reclamation ponds (meaning sewage treatment).
- compiler-guy 10y agoBefore that it was more-or-less swamps and wetlands. Not beaches or real shorelines.
- cfallin 10y agoThe muddy marsh/salt ponds surprised me too! But there are a few spots where the actual Bay (open water) is visible... e.g. Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto. Also nearby hills have views -- I used to take walks to the top of the hill behind Google's Crittenden buildings, from where you can see a good bit of the southern Bay and up the peninsula northward. (Those hills also used to be MTV's garbage dump, so it could be worse!)
- tn13 10y agoBiggest question I had when I first arrived in bay area. Gov. Regulation are the reason why it is a bit harder to have taller buildings, tech companies have lot of money to go for more land grab is the main reason. If you are building a building with X floor area the city government requires you to have f(x) area as open land. If you want to build a very tall building it will have to look like the Saruman's Tower. This regulation is part of the reason why Sunnyvale or Mountain View do not look like SF. It is also the reason why property prices are so expensive. The good part however is that it means less crime, better neighbourhoods and overall good quality of life.
- matt4077 10y agoI like how you seem to say that a google building taller than X would be a crime magnet :)
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoAre the better neighborhoods, crime rates, and qualities of life a result of lower-rise buildings, or because the cost of living is so high that only the wealthy or upper-income can afford to live there?
- justinlardinois 10y agoAsking the real questions. I'm not sure what the correlation between tall buildings and crime is. "Better neighborhoods" is usually code for the sorts of things people don't say in public and it seems to be that quality of life is more dictated by your level of income rather than where you live.
- karma_vaccum123 10y agoIt's happening. I think the one thing people need to realize is the big "space crunch" in the Bay Area is a relatively recent issue. There is NIMBYism to be sure, but development is slowly catching up. Look at the Sunnyvale side of Moffett Field, it has rapidly grown a collection of tall buildings. The potential issue that was brought up in Mountain View is an unwillingness to become a "company town" for Google. Residents can remember being a "company town" (to a lesser extent) for SGI and then SGI went poof, leaving the Shoreline area vacant for a time. I actually think it is good for residents to be suspicious of tying their fates to one very large employer; nothing lasts forever. The same issue may one day impact Cupertino...how many companies could or would want to acquire a single property as big as the "spaceship" campus? Apple isn't going away anytime soon, but this is still a valid concern.
- altoz 10y agoAm I mistaken or is it because of the possibility of earthquakes?
- mikeash 10y agoLooking at the Tokyo skyline (or, indeed, downtown San Francisco) I believe you're mistaken.
- eropple 10y agoThat hasn't been a serious concern for a pretty long time. Consider the Taipei 101, which exists in an earthquake zone and has to deal with typhoons.
- protomyth 10y agoThe Tokyo's Sky City episode of Extreme Engineering has a lot of information on Taipei 101 (more interesting than the Sky City part frankly).
- BurningFrog 10y agoThe failure of giant Google to influence zoning in it's tiny home town shows that money does not control politics as much as some think.
- MicroBerto 10y agoNIMBY is a powerful force. You go against them as a council person, your political career is as good as over.
- samfisher83 10y agoYou also have a lot of rich people in Mountain View. They have NIMBY attitude and money to do something about it.
- sjg007 10y agoTrue but there are now more renters than owners in the city so things will change.
- BurningFrog 10y agoYou're not implying the MV home owners have more money than Google? They DO have more votes than Google.
- tristanj 10y agoMost of the other comments are off base for Mountain View/Sunnyvale shoreline area. Google and Linkedin can't build tall buildings here because their campuses are next to Moffett federal airfield and the surrounding area is subject to building height restrictions. There's a map for this, I'll edit my comment when I find it. Edit: I found the map (http://i.imgur.com/B48yRGK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/B48yRGK.jpg), the maximum building height for this area is 182 feet above sea level. The Google campus sits around 15 feet above sea level and LinkedIn around 50. That works out to a max height of around 10 stories for the Google area, 7 stories for LinkedIn. So actually, it's higher than I thought. There are quite a few tallish (7-10 story) buildings along 237 and Central expressway that seem to skirt this restriction.
- 1024core 10y agoThis has got to be wrong. Have you seen the "Moffett Towers" buildings that are actually bordering Moffett Field? Google's buildings are 2 floor max; Moffett Towers has 6-8 floor buildings.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoThey're not exactly wrong, it's just that they're subject to those rules and ALSO subject to city-level zoning regulations.
- tristanj 10y agoYou're right, the other comments aren't incorrect (I wrote that word earlier), it's just in this spot there's federal restrictions on building height that prevent certain developments. I edited my comment to remove that part.
- minwcnt5 10y agoThat's not true. There are at least seven four storey buildings (Alza, Crittenden) on the main campus, and there's also a new 5 storey building on Pear Ave. But almost none of their buildings were built new, most were already built and acquired. Their proposals for new buildings have mostly been around 6-8 storeys, but they've had problems getting the city to approve their plans. I believe the LinkedIn land they acquired also already has approval for taller buildings.
- abledon 10y agoWhat is the feasibility of having people work in floating dirigibles? (Think GoodYear blimps)
- tjr 10y agoLinkedIn has roughly 10k employees What do they do that makes use of 10k employees?
- hammock 10y agoAccording to LinkedIn (this is a cool use of their website), of 12K employees listed the top 3 functions, covering 75% of employees, are Sales (4K), Engineering (3K), and HR (2K). https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=1337%2C1336309%2C9202023%2C290903%2C39939%2C2561065&trk=extra_biz_employees_deg_connected https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=1337%2C1336309%2C920...
- technofiend 10y agoWhat the... isn't that about 1,500 too many HR people? Or does LinkedIn do all of their own 401(k), insurance, etc administration?
- brian-armstrong 10y agoAnd about 2,500 too many engineers
- DominikR 10y agoWell, the 2K HR employees wont be sitting around in offices doing nothing, that's for sure. But still, the ratio is counter intuitive to me as the usual recommendations look vastly different. I'm curious to learn why Linkedins business model requires this amount of HR employees. If somebody knows, please let me know!
- eitally 10y agoIt's not HR in the sense you think. LinkedIn makes the majority of their money selling recruiting tools. That requires scads of talent management experts.
- ars 10y agoLinkedin is Microsoft now, I'm sure Microsoft can figure out a use for it, even if it's not directly part of the Linkedin site.
- drewg123 10y agoAs an Xoogler, I think this is great news. By the time I left a year ago, there were far too many far-flung buildings in Sunnyvale, with new ones opening all the time (and my group was -- and still is -- slated to move into exile in Sunnyvale). These were the worst of both worlds -- you still had to deal with a Bay Area cost of living and commute, but you were too far to easily collaborate with other groups, or take advantage of events & resources on the main GooglePlex (TGIF at Charlies, author talks, various events, picking up dogfood hardware, etc.) Not to mention fragmented bus routes.
- justinlardinois 10y ago> you still had to deal with a Bay Area cost of living and commute Isn't that true both before and after this? Nowhere anywhere remotely near Mountain View or Sunnyvale has a reasonable cost of living.
- Naritai 10y agoyeah but at least you get the benefits listed.
- Someone1234 10y agoThey acknowledge that. That was their point, that in both scenarios you get that downside but then pointed out a series of upsides of being on the actual Google Campus. Did you stop reading halfway through the sentence?
- mod 10y agoThat's their point. You just sort-of repeated it.
- andrewfromx 10y agoha u might as well have been in Google LA and had the perk of working on venice beach.
- rb2k_ 10y agoSame goes the other way round. There were some LinkedIn buildings in SV, but the connection to the MV headquarters wasn't really there.
- ape4 10y agoOf course LinkedIn is now owned by Microsoft. Maybe they are moving to Redmond.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoTelling 10,000 employees to move to Redmond isn't particularly practical or likely. Particularly when they could likely find jobs with other Silicon Valley companies instead.
- extesy 10y agoLinkedIn is not owned by Microsoft yet, so it can't base its decisions based on this fact.
- ryanburk 10y agomicrosoft has a history of leaving large acquisitions where they are. skype (global), powerpoint, hotmail, yahoo ads, & webTV (mountain view), yammer (sf), dynamics (north dakota, but grew in redmond), an app virtualization thing (boston)
- __jal 10y agoSo who wants to redo the Risk board to cover the South Bay?
- Apocryphon 10y agoSouth Bay would be the main area, but it should properly include the entire Bay Area as well.
- aoki 10y agopersonally, i can't wait to see what the Silicon Valley (HBO) credits animation does with this next season. buildings standing up and trading places?
- hyperrail 10y agoMicrosoft's Silicon Valley Campus is also just north of the 101 Shoreline Blvd exit - currently, it and LinkedIn HQ are only about 1 mile apart, possibly within walking distance. If and when this deal goes through, this won't be the case anymore, and so LinkedIn will be isolated from other Microsoft offices. I guess it is too early for LinkedIn to be making decisions as part of Microsoft...
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoHow big is Microsoft's presence in SV? Could they reasonably move along with LinkedIn at some point?
- iaw 10y agoNot very big at the moment. They would never relocate from Redmond but a satellite office (from my naive uninformed perspective) isn't out of the question.
- bkjelden 10y agoThey have 4 office buildings and one cafeteria/commons building on that campus - space for around 1500 employees. It's worth noting that Microsoft's bay area presence is already pretty fragmented, though. They have some more office space a couple exits down 101 in Sunnyvale (not walkable to the MV campus at all), a Skype office in Palo Alto, Yammer in SF, etc. They've also announced plans to renovate and expand the Mountain View campus: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/01/21/microsoft-submits-plans-for-major-mountain-view.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/01/21/microsoft...
- goodcjw2 10y agoDecent go player, well played!
- mmanfrin 10y agoCorporations now swapping land to fix enclaves, much like nations do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave
- nshelly 10y agoI wonder how Bay Area land usage would change if property owners were paying tax at the market rate for their use of the land. They would likely move more employees to other offices, as they faced more competitive market forces. On some tracts, Google and Intuit are paying a property tax rate 10-100x lower than local homeowners and businesses who moved in recently.[1] A "split roll" - modifying the existing system for corporations, keeping the existing for residential -- would level the playing field for large incumbents and new market entrants, paying for office space at a much higher rate. [1] The assessed value of one 13.7-acre tract underlying part of Google’s headquarters is $789,635, producing an estimated tax rate of 1.3 cents a square foot, far less than most neighboring properties. In interviews, commercial real estate experts said that both Google and the property’s owner, Richard Peery, a septuagenarian Palo Alto real estate developer and billionaire, were saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Commercial landowners often pass the cost of property tax on to their tenants. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/california-property-taxes-can-vary-wildly-in-silicon-valley.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/california-property-tax...
- HappyTypist 10y agoCities know tech companies have more leverage than them. Moving headquarters is hard, but expanding to a second new headquarters is doable.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago>> They would likely move more employees to other offices, as they faced more competitive market forces. Which usually means "outsourcing". Cargill is famous for doing this. They recently "opened" an office in Bangalore and then said they were moving all their US teams to their "new office" in Bangalore. Is it outsourcing? Technically no. They get away with it because the people in their "new office" are Cargill employees.
- kens 10y agoThe deal involves 2.5 million square feet of office space. In comparison, the Empire State Building has 2.2 million square feet. So this is a pretty big deal. (I'm trying to imagine what Mountain View would look like with the Empire State Building beside 101.)
- epc 10y agoAnd 111 Eighth Avenue, Google’s NYC headquarters, is 2.9 MM square feet (I think Google only occupies about a third of the building so far).
- tomlu 10y agoI work there. They've expanded a lot. If my reckoning is right Google occupies 8/15 floors completely, and occupy fractions of a couple more floors.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoIs the rest of it empty or do they rent it?
- droidist2 10y agoTheir tenants include Nike, Deutsch Inc, Bank of New York and Barnes & Noble. They also donated space for Cornell NYC Tech to hold classes there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue#Google
- nunez 10y agoAs of last year (when I worked there), 8 was a pass-through floor mostly occupied by ISPs. 15/9/10 should be done by now, though.
- rconti 10y agoOh man. One of my favorite memories was the look on the Internap security guy's face when we parked a 19ft box truck at their loading dock on the 10th floor of the Port Authority building. "the truck is WHERE?"
- sethbannon 10y agoI really hope this means we'll get to see this beautiful new campus vision come to life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3v4rIG8kQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3v4rIG8kQA It was put on hold after Google lost development rights to needed property to LinkedIn.
- pm24601 10y agoNot entirely - both LinkedIn and Google faced building restrictions because of traffic volumes. This makes it easier for Google to solve the traffic volumes and get something built.
- hn_user2 10y agoAlso has a nice tax benefit. Thy can restart depreciation.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- brudgers 10y agoAfter reading about the history of the deal, my gut is Linkedin comes out way ahead. They dumped the distraction of a complex real-estate deal and dumped a real-estate strategy that was probably hatched around the time of its IPO. A lot has changed since then.
- minwcnt5 10y agoLooks good on the City of Mountain View. All those years of fighting against Google's expansion, awarding building rights to LinkedIn instead of Google and decrying how the city was becoming a "one company town". Looks like that's what they're getting anyway, only now Google gets the sweetheart (relatively speaking) deal that LinkedIn had, while the city loses the benefits of the more progressive Google plan that they rejected. At least they saved a few burrowing owls, though - worth it?
- hkmurakami 10y agoI'm surprised that said deal was untransferrable, or that the city didn't have some kind of right of refusal...
- inlined 10y agoHow would the city have rights to bar a company from selling its real estate?
- hkmurakami 10y agoLiterally anything is possible in a contract. Recall that for instance, the Canadian government blocked a RIM sale to China. It's not unreasonable for MV to have a clause in the contract that the winner of the land development bid must agree to transfer restrictions XYZ.
- zatkin 10y agoIt's funny how you say "one company town". There are a lot of those in the Bay Area. - Cupertino = Apple - Mountain View = Google - Milpitas/San Jose = Cisco
- rsanek 10y agoCould also add Palantir = Palo Alto
- 10y ago
- bitmapbrother 10y agoI often wonder why Google puts up with the Mountain View city council. They should just relocate their headquarters to another part of the state and be done with them. I'm sure there are a number of cities around that area, with huge parcels of undeveloped or neglected land, that would gleefully welcome a brand new Google headquarters. They've gotten too big for that area and their recent real estate acquisitions in Mountain View looks like just a bunch of dispersed buildings.
- dapole 10y ago"huge parcels of undeveloped or neglected land." None of that exists anymore in the bay area. Part of the reason you keep hearing about the housing crisis here, it's all pretty much been developed.
- pm24601 10y ago2 words: Moffet Field. Google is using the field for their corporate jets and some secret projects. They are refurbishing Hanger One for some of those projects. How many cities have a large airfield for almost exclusive use available? And wind tunnels? And large hangers? Google isn't going anywhere far.
- ryanmarsh 10y agoIs this a 1031 exchange?
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI was reminded of France and Spain dividing up the new world :-) But more seriously, does Microsoft (LinkedIn's putative owner) give up the remaining buildings near Shoreline and 101 (the former 'BARC' facility?)
- aoki 10y agoMSR BARC was in downtown SF. did you mean the buildings around the late MSR-SV? no sign of that yet.
- bubersson 10y agoIt's all about the most strategic asset ... whoever gets Sports Page wins
- yeukhon 10y agoJust curious, is YouTube still operating in its own campus? San Jose, correct?
- prodigal_erik 10y agohttps://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/san-bruno/ https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/san-bruno/