5 ms·

Might be a coincidence, but they also just announced plans to rent 50'000 square meters of office space in Zurich http://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/googl

Might be a coincidence, but they also just announced plans to rent 50'000 square meters of office space in Zurich http://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/google-investiert-den-standort-schweiz-711965 http://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/google-investiert-d...

raverbashing 12y ago
I wonder why is Zurich a big part of Google's strategy as opposed to other places in Europe
- tribaal 12y ago
  Because it's been on position 1 of best standard of living in the world pretty consistently, and Switzerland is geographically central, well interconnected, business-friendly, and not part of the EU? Just a guess :) EDIT: It seems Vienna is on top since 2010, my bad. But position 2 is not so bad, and the other points still stand :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...
  - jahnu 12y ago
    These rankings are really odd. They feel like they are only aimed at international business people who work around the world and take their families with them.
    - nemanja 12y ago
      Your intuition is spot on - Mercer is one of the biggest HR/benefits consulting firms, and primary use cases of their surveys are to inform execs and provide a reference to HR when calculating cost of living comp adjustments when execs are relocating
  - pfortuny 12y ago
    The NOT part of the EU is not to be considered lightly. It is possibly a great factor.
    - Raphael 12y ago
      What's the advantage to being outside the EU?
      - pfortuny 12y ago
        Being free of a lot of oversized taxes, unnecessary legislation and the feeling of porwerlessness against a social chaste called "those at Brussels."
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    It's also extremely expensive ;) But yeah, I know the city, and I agree with most of it. Also, yeah, not part of the EU (but in practice it's more of a "pick what you want" thing with the EU
    - tribaal 12y ago
      Sure it's expensive, but if you live there your salary is indexed to that cost (especially if you work for google), so it's not like it's a problem in practice. Of course, if you're just visiting... ouch :)
      - evgen 12y ago
        Of if, like Google, you are the one paying those salaries indexed to cost of living. Then your employees become rather expensive...
        tribaal 12y ago
        Well, it seems like Google salaries are very capable of sustaining a familly in Zurich: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm And that's US salaries (the website only offers a free preview.. yada yada). I think Google generally thinks the cost of a talented enigineer is justified, and switching locations will of course represent a cost, but probably not such a big one in the great scheme of things.
        saalweachter 12y ago
        It's quite possible there will be a relative loss of status. You might go from being -- say -- in the top decile or oven top few percentiles of income/wealth in Russia, to being in a middle decile in Zurich, even if you are quite comfortable or your absolute income or disposable income ends up being larger.
  - lentil_soup 12y ago
    Those surveys are incredibly subjective and will vary person to person. There's not such thing as a "best" city for standard of living. When comparing cities I think it's best to use hard data and then compare them based on what's important to you personally. I usually use http://www.numbeo.com http://www.numbeo.com as a starting point for this.
    - tribaal 12y ago
      Oh look! The site you linked to agrees with the study I linked to! Amazing! http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/city_result.jsp?country=Switzerland&city=Zurich http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/city_result.jsp?countr... (see that gauge? It's all the way to green!) EDIT: and here is their ranking. It's only number 4... http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings.jsp http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings.jsp
      - lentil_soup 12y ago
        I don't think you got the "important to you personally" part of my post. Thanks for your condesending tone as well.
  - dantheman 12y ago
    The #1 best standard of living metrics are highly flawed. Vienna ranks quite high, but ask people where they want to live and it's not Vienna or Zurich, it's larger cities like Paris/London/New York/Boston/Los Angeles/San Francisco/Tokyo/Hong Kong or it's smaller rural towns. The factors they focus on don't really reflect well on quality of life.
  - dantheman 12y ago
    The #1 best standard of living metrics are highly flawed. Vienna ranks quite high, but ask people where they want to live and it's not Vienna or Zurich, it's larger cities like Paris/London/New York/Boston/Los Angeles/San Francisco/Tokyo/Hong Kong or it's smaller rural towns. The factors they focus on don't really reflect well on quality of life.
- dagw 12y ago
  Simpler tax laws and more employer friendly labor laws would be a guess. Perhaps it's also easier for Google to get residency permits for its workers in Switzerland.
  - malthaus 12y ago
    Getting (especially non-EU) foreigners to work here is actually a huge problem, increasing in future with upcoming changes to immigration law. A good thing of Google betting on Switzerland might be some increased lobbying around that topic as it's all a bit of a mess currently.
- richmarr 12y ago
  Tax.
- justincormack 12y ago
  London is too. They are planning to build a huge office in Kings Cross to replace the current offices, although it has been delayed apparently to make it bigger[1]. This is much larger than Zurich and almost the size of Mountain View it seems. [1] http://www.building.co.uk/google%E2%80%99s-review-of-%C2%A3650m-king%E2%80%99s-cross-hq-%E2%80%98could-take-two-years%E2%80%99/5068200.article http://www.building.co.uk/google%E2%80%99s-review-of-%C2%A36...
- snarfy 12y ago
  It's because of the laws. Privacy laws, secrecy laws, tax laws, etc.
  - kyledrake 12y ago
    This, exactly.
- tormeh 12y ago
  I would guess ETH Zurich and, to a lesser degree, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne has something to do with it. That's basically Europe's leading engineering and software universities right there.
- kyledrake 12y ago
  As one of the world's most neutral countries, Switzerland has historically been a pretty good place to establish an autonomous, neutral, predictably-regulated business when governments are going crazy (which, frankly, they have been lately). If the rest of the world goes nuts, they'll be able to pull out and move base to Zurich, which is not likely to be subject to a war or other major political upsets. Switzerland is historically infamous for having these qualities, it's why even the Nazis used them to deposit money. They also don't have things like DMCA laws. War aside, let's say the corporate lobby gets them to push the screws on DMCA to make it worse. Hello new Youtube HQ. TLDR: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8740289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8740289
jkaljundi 12y ago
Google has been extremely active in Zürich and Switzerland for 10+ years: http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/09/inside-google-z.html http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/09/inside-google-z.html Google Panoramio is also based there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramio

raverbashing 12y ago

I wonder why is Zurich a big part of Google's strategy as opposed to other places in Europe

tribaal 12y ago
Because it's been on position 1 of best standard of living in the world pretty consistently, and Switzerland is geographically central, well interconnected, business-friendly, and not part of the EU? Just a guess :) EDIT: It seems Vienna is on top since 2010, my bad. But position 2 is not so bad, and the other points still stand :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...
- jahnu 12y ago
  These rankings are really odd. They feel like they are only aimed at international business people who work around the world and take their families with them.
  - nemanja 12y ago
    Your intuition is spot on - Mercer is one of the biggest HR/benefits consulting firms, and primary use cases of their surveys are to inform execs and provide a reference to HR when calculating cost of living comp adjustments when execs are relocating
- pfortuny 12y ago
  The NOT part of the EU is not to be considered lightly. It is possibly a great factor.
  - Raphael 12y ago
    What's the advantage to being outside the EU?
    - pfortuny 12y ago
      Being free of a lot of oversized taxes, unnecessary legislation and the feeling of porwerlessness against a social chaste called "those at Brussels."
- raverbashing 12y ago
  It's also extremely expensive ;) But yeah, I know the city, and I agree with most of it. Also, yeah, not part of the EU (but in practice it's more of a "pick what you want" thing with the EU
  - tribaal 12y ago
    Sure it's expensive, but if you live there your salary is indexed to that cost (especially if you work for google), so it's not like it's a problem in practice. Of course, if you're just visiting... ouch :)
    - evgen 12y ago
      Of if, like Google, you are the one paying those salaries indexed to cost of living. Then your employees become rather expensive...
      - tribaal 12y ago
        Well, it seems like Google salaries are very capable of sustaining a familly in Zurich: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm And that's US salaries (the website only offers a free preview.. yada yada). I think Google generally thinks the cost of a talented enigineer is justified, and switching locations will of course represent a cost, but probably not such a big one in the great scheme of things.
        saalweachter 12y ago
        It's quite possible there will be a relative loss of status. You might go from being -- say -- in the top decile or oven top few percentiles of income/wealth in Russia, to being in a middle decile in Zurich, even if you are quite comfortable or your absolute income or disposable income ends up being larger.
- lentil_soup 12y ago
  Those surveys are incredibly subjective and will vary person to person. There's not such thing as a "best" city for standard of living. When comparing cities I think it's best to use hard data and then compare them based on what's important to you personally. I usually use http://www.numbeo.com http://www.numbeo.com as a starting point for this.
  - tribaal 12y ago
    Oh look! The site you linked to agrees with the study I linked to! Amazing! http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/city_result.jsp?country=Switzerland&city=Zurich http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/city_result.jsp?countr... (see that gauge? It's all the way to green!) EDIT: and here is their ranking. It's only number 4... http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings.jsp http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings.jsp
    - lentil_soup 12y ago
      I don't think you got the "important to you personally" part of my post. Thanks for your condesending tone as well.
- dantheman 12y ago
  The #1 best standard of living metrics are highly flawed. Vienna ranks quite high, but ask people where they want to live and it's not Vienna or Zurich, it's larger cities like Paris/London/New York/Boston/Los Angeles/San Francisco/Tokyo/Hong Kong or it's smaller rural towns. The factors they focus on don't really reflect well on quality of life.
- dantheman 12y ago
  The #1 best standard of living metrics are highly flawed. Vienna ranks quite high, but ask people where they want to live and it's not Vienna or Zurich, it's larger cities like Paris/London/New York/Boston/Los Angeles/San Francisco/Tokyo/Hong Kong or it's smaller rural towns. The factors they focus on don't really reflect well on quality of life.
dagw 12y ago
Simpler tax laws and more employer friendly labor laws would be a guess. Perhaps it's also easier for Google to get residency permits for its workers in Switzerland.
- malthaus 12y ago
  Getting (especially non-EU) foreigners to work here is actually a huge problem, increasing in future with upcoming changes to immigration law. A good thing of Google betting on Switzerland might be some increased lobbying around that topic as it's all a bit of a mess currently.
richmarr 12y ago
Tax.
justincormack 12y ago
London is too. They are planning to build a huge office in Kings Cross to replace the current offices, although it has been delayed apparently to make it bigger[1]. This is much larger than Zurich and almost the size of Mountain View it seems. [1] http://www.building.co.uk/google%E2%80%99s-review-of-%C2%A3650m-king%E2%80%99s-cross-hq-%E2%80%98could-take-two-years%E2%80%99/5068200.article http://www.building.co.uk/google%E2%80%99s-review-of-%C2%A36...
snarfy 12y ago
It's because of the laws. Privacy laws, secrecy laws, tax laws, etc.
- kyledrake 12y ago
  This, exactly.
tormeh 12y ago
I would guess ETH Zurich and, to a lesser degree, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne has something to do with it. That's basically Europe's leading engineering and software universities right there.
kyledrake 12y ago
As one of the world's most neutral countries, Switzerland has historically been a pretty good place to establish an autonomous, neutral, predictably-regulated business when governments are going crazy (which, frankly, they have been lately). If the rest of the world goes nuts, they'll be able to pull out and move base to Zurich, which is not likely to be subject to a war or other major political upsets. Switzerland is historically infamous for having these qualities, it's why even the Nazis used them to deposit money. They also don't have things like DMCA laws. War aside, let's say the corporate lobby gets them to push the screws on DMCA to make it worse. Hello new Youtube HQ. TLDR: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8740289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8740289

jkaljundi 12y ago

Google has been extremely active in Zürich and Switzerland for 10+ years: http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/09/inside-google-z.html http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/09/inside-google-z.html Google Panoramio is also based there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramio