Dystopian Irony:
Google's purchase of a $2.1 billion Manhattan office building in the midst of a work-from-home pandemic
It’s September, somewhere in the early 1990s in sunny Menlo Park, California. Larry Page sits across from Sergey Brin during a break from their PhD program at Stanford University. Together, the two are working on a research project, one that analyzes the relationships between websites. Struggling to find the information they’re looking for, they pose the question: “What if we could filter through endless results by prioritizing the most-viewed content?” The idea was fleshed out during the creation of a program called ‘PageRank’, and later ‘BackRub’. But after fixing some bugs, along with a name, they rented out a garage in Palo Alto and created the largest index of websites to ever exist in the world.
Through success and benevolence (Don’t be Evil was the company’s first official Code of Conduct), Google was able to expand from its incubation garage into several billion-dollar office buildings throughout the world. The company morphed from a PhD project into a $300 billion enterprise that not only purchased competing tech companies and invested in some of the most innovative start ups, but also purchased high end real estate across the globe. The company's latest acquisition is a $2.1 billion office building located on Manhattan's West Side, known as the St. John's Terminal building. The sprawling campus is expected to house 12,000 employees and overlooks the Hudson River waterfront. Despite its dystopian goals like ‘controlling robot armies’ and ‘building bots with personalities,’ Google has separated itself from other search engines as a company with anticipated longevity.
Real Estate Around the World
Google initially launched from a Palo Alto garage, renting two other sites in the Silicon Valley before finally settling on its Mountain View home at 1600 Ampitheatre Parkway in 2003. The new headquarters would be nicknamed the Googleplex, and nearly 20 years later, it still remains the main headquarters and campus for the company. The risky real estate decision would serve as a starting point for a variety of other property acquisitions from the company throughout its development.
One of the first locations outside of Silicon Valley that Google chose to establish residency in was Boulder, Colorado. The company moved to the Centennial State back in 2006, employing a modest 1,500 people. But since its early days, Google has expanded, moving into Google's Pearl Place campus: a three-building, 330,000-square-foot development located on 30th Street. But the company didn't stop there. In September of 2021, the company announced they had also purchased the 125,000-square-foot office building across the street. The six-acre Rêve Boulder is expected to start housing its own Google team by January of 2022.
New York, I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down
When Google announced their decision to purchase the $2.1 billion, 1.3 million-square-foot building in Hudson Square, the deal became known throughout the real estate market as the largest American office purchase since 2018. The former largest American office purchase was, again, from Google. And this purchase too, was in New York City. Google bought its $2.5 billion Chelsea Market building back in 2018. Prior to the purchase, Google had already made its presence known throughout New York, having acquired the historic 111 Eight Ave. building in 2010 for a reported $1.77 billion. But Google didn't just swallow the big apple in one massive bite. When the company first entered the state, it was home to just a single employee working out of a Starbucks in the early 2000s. But the recent acquisition moved the company from a one-chair-next-to-a-public-bathroom set up, into a 3.1 million square foot office empire.
Construction on the $2.1 billion-dollar office building is expected to finish mid-2023. This includes the buildings redevelopment as a green office building, incorporating open spaces and a rooftop terrace. The design will also feature references to the building's historic past, including railway tracks that still exist within the complex. Enticing employees is a big motivational push for the company to bring workers back to the office after a long work-from-home hiatus.
A Future that Algorithms Couldn't Predict
New York corporate real estate was in a chokehold during the pandemic. The work-from-home lifestyle that was quickly embraced by long-time office employees served as the greatest threat to the real estate industry in several decades. Vacancy levels for offices reached ultimate highs during the pandemic. But beyond providing a desk for their employees, corporate real estate provided an entire economy that kept many cities, including New York, alive. Millions of workers who were summoned to their offices each morning resulted in coffee runs, breakfast stops, business lunches, cocktail talks, dinner deals, and after-dinner Broadway productions that supported an entire economic ecosystem throughout the state. The absence of commuters led many restaurants and businesses to close their doors during the pandemic. Several major organizations even chose to abandon their office buildings altogether, with companies like Condé Nast and JP Morgan Chase downsizing significantly. So when Google announced their plans to expand, elected officials took the opportunity to praise their decision, something that prior to the pandemic would have resulted in commentaries and critiques, citing words like ‘gentrification’ and ‘urban removal’. Instead, it got Mayor Bill de Blasio blushing, calling the deal, "a historic investment in New York City."
Beyond saving the real estate market, and, possibly, the economy as a whole, Google announced a series of innovative plans for their future. The company will extend their reach into ambient computing, prioritizing machine/human interaction by making their software and hardware available everywhere. Through integrating products like creating apps on mobile devices that work for Android phones, Google is expected to capitalize on their services. And with over 2 million mobile apps currently available, they have a plethora of work cut out for them. Robotics have also become a recent but integral side-avenue for the company. Initially utilizing robotics for driverless cars, the company has decided to continue their research, creating an entire robot army via their acquisition of Boston Dynamics. This includes several ominous patents like "controlling robot armies" and "building robots with personalities." But despite how dystopian the $300 billion company might seem, there will always be a big, beautiful office building for their employees to do their work in.
Sources:
Trendrr, NYTimes, CNBC, CNN, Forbes, WallStreetJournal, NYPost, BizJournals, NeilPatel, Quartz, PatFT
Dystopian Irony:
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