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I thought the activists are against this because 'Google is building a company town!' Shouldn't they be happy that Google has ended the deal? Now no one gets to
by guardiangod 3y ago
I thought the activists are against this because 'Google is building a company town!' Shouldn't they be happy that Google has ended the deal? Now no one gets to live in houses.
- riku_iki 3y agoBut I think they still build bunch of offices which are still in development.
- hashtag-til 3y agoThey forgot to add the safety nets to the buildings! Easy mistake.
- coding123 3y agoThis is my experience with almost every topic on HN...
- unethical_ban 3y agoSocratic discussion, excessive skepticism, or antagonistic metacommentary?
- dpkirchner 3y agoI'd add: Ignorance of the concept of hyperbole.
- harryVic 3y agoLife is too easy in the west and especially in tech. People love to complain about absolutely anything.
- pie420 3y agoSo true. It was such a shock moving here from Chicago. People make 50% more money, work less, have better weather, and spend all day in useless meetings where people take turns going on 10 minute long tangential, corporate buzzword filled monologues. And I'm in an industry that makes essential, life-saving products. Can't imagine what it's like in big tech.
- Jasper_ 3y agoIn San Jose, they tore down a bunch of restaurants, razed a bunch of houses that people were living in to build more office buildings, then decided "nah" and stopped building the office buildings. So now we have a bunch of land that the city gave to Google for cheap that they're just sitting on, that can't be used to build houses again. The LendLease houses were an integral part of why city council approved the plan. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/21/googles-80-acre-san-jose-mega-campus-on-hold-amid-economic-slowdown-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/21/googles-80-acre-san-jose-meg...
- greenie_beans 3y agothere should be some penalty for this.
- jeffbee 3y agoThe penalty is that Google now pays 2% of all taxes in Santa Clara County, whereas before Google bought the property it had been vacant and non-productive since 1849.
- greenie_beans 3y agofair point, but was it vacant and non-productive? i have no idea about this particular instance except for what the original commenter said, this particularly stuck out: > razed a bunch of houses that people were living in to build more office buildings that doesn't sound unproductive or vacant to me?
- anon84873628 3y agoThe project encompassed locations in San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View, so if people don't specify which place they are talking about the commentary is not very productive.
- jeffbee 3y agoA shit dive bar got demolished. Whoop-de-doo. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3292089,-121.9010776,3a,70.8y,129.84h,89.66t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1siG0XS9vfxVjwIS7-Iz--UQ!2e0!5s20201101T000000!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3292089,-121.9010776,3a,70.8...
- jnwatson 3y agoMountain View is already a Google company town.
- thebigman433 3y agoThese comments are so stupid because it generalizes relatively small groups of people to a whole area, and adds nothing to the conversation. Better off for everyone if you say nothing instead of this inflammatory bs
- lost_tourist 3y agoI mean gatekeeper comments are just as bad, no?
- danaris 3y agoTwo things can be bad at once: both "Google choosing to build a company town," and "Google starting to build a company town, getting partway in, then abandoning the project." It's unclear to me from the article just how far this got, but if it already reached the point of tearing down existing buildings, let alone starting to build new ones, and then stopped, that's definitely bad. Even if it didn't get to that point, it may very well have had a negative effect on the area simply due to Google's (money's) outsized influence: anyone else who might have chosen to do something with the area would've turned away, for instance, and it might have affected property values as well.