Whoosh! Google on-the-ground expansion stuns California
A "stunning expansion" by internet giant Google over the last few weeks has seen it rent or buy more than 1 million square feet of offices in Santa Clara County, California, including the purchase of several Mountain View buildings in recent days.
Google HQ in Mountain View
The space is big enough to contain 4,600 to 5,800 Google employees, the San Jose Mercury News reports, based on an estimate of one employee for every 200 to 250 square feet of space.
"We haven't seen this kind of growth in a Bay Area tech company before," said Tom Foremski, editor of Silicon Valley Watch, an online site that tracks technology trends in the Bay Area.
Google paid $246 million in cash to buy seven buildings in Mountain View totalling 235,000 square feet according to property records .
Earlier in the month, Mountain View-based Google confirmed it had leased a big Sunnyvale building, also totaling 235,000 square feet, near the corner of 11th Avenue and Innovation Way.
And in mid-August, Google leased a 500,000-square-foot Mountain View campus at 100 Mayfield Road.
Together, the deals total 1.16 million square feet in a roughly one-month period, said the Mercury News.
In 2010, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing stated that Google at that time occupied about 4.2 million square feet at its Mountain View headquarters.
Eventually Google is thought likely to have 20,000 to 25,000 employees in Mountain View and Sunnyvale.
"Google is in very-high-growth mode, obviously," said one local real estate executive. "They have to put their employees somewhere."
By comparison, Facebook's HQ in Menlo Park totals 1 million square feet.
"Google's growth is unique," said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies, a market research firm.
"The Google search-engine business that's tied to their ads is growing exponentially. Their mobile is growing fast. They need much more staff to code, market and manage what they are doing in advertising, and more offices for those employees."