Googleplex
- The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google, Inc., located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California, United States, near San Jose.
- The original complex with 2 million square feet of office space is the company's second largest square footage assemblage of Google buildings (#1 is the 2.9 million square foot 111 Eighth Avenue building in New York City which Google bought in 2010). Once the 1.1 million square foot Bay View addition comes on line in 2015 the Googleplex will be the biggest collection of Google buildings with 3.1 million square feet of space.
- "Googleplex" is a portmanteau of Google and complex and a reference to googolplex, the name given to the large number 10(10100), or 10googol (with complexmeaning a complex of buildings).
Facilities and history
- Silicon Graphics (SGI). The office space and corporate campus is located within a larger 26-acre (110,000 m2) site that contains Charleston Park, a 5-acre (20,000 m2) public park; improved access to Permanente Creek; and public roads that connect the corporate site to Shoreline Park and the Bay Trail. The project, launched in 1994 was built on the site of one of the few working farms in the area and was city owned at the time (identified as "Farmer's Field" in the planning documents), was a creative collaboration between SGI, SWA Group of San Francisco, Sausalito, and the Planning and Community Development Agency of the City of Mountain View.[citation needed] The objective was to develop in complementary fashion the privately owned corporate headquarters and adjoining public greenspace. Key design decisions placed parking for nearly 2000 cars underground, enabling SWA to integrate the two open spaces with water features, shallow pools, fountains, pathways, plazas, and a gigantic statue of a dinosaur. The project was completed in 1997. The ASLA noted in 1999 that the SGI project was a significant departure from typical corporate campuses, challenging conventional thinking about private and public space.
- STUDIOS Architecture was the executive architect for the original SGI campus, and provided both interior architecture and base building design.
Location
- The Googleplex is located between Charleston Road, Amphitheatre Parkway, and Shoreline Boulevard in north Mountain View, California close to the Shoreline Parkwetlands. Employees living in San Francisco, the East Bay, or South Bay may take a free wifi-enabled Google shuttle to and from work. The shuttles are powered by a fuel blend of 95% petroleum diesel and 5% biodiesel, and have the latest emissions reduction technology. Googleplex was also the main filming location for the 2013 film The Internship.
- Neighbors of the Googleplex include Shoreline Amphitheatre to the north; Intuit to the northwest and Century Theatres, Microsoft Corporation's Silicon Valleyresearch complex, and the Computer History Museum to the south. Moffett Field lies nearby to the east.