While you may think of the Googleplex, the central Mountain View complex where Google runs so many of their experiments, as the search engine giant’s core location, the truth is that Google is everywhere. A total of nearly seventy Google office buildings can be found across the globe, with twenty-three in North America alone. Now, Google has made a major real estate purchase that promises that their New York City office will become even more important to Google operations.
Google tells the history of their presence in New York on the official Google blog. Their “scrappy, highly-caffeinated sales ‘team'” was comprised of just one person back in 2000, and they’ve expanded three times since. Now, with 2,000 current Googlers and a desire to hire more representatives in every division, Google is making its fourth move — to 111 Eighth Avenue, a former port authority property that has been modernized both in appearance and technology.
Google had previously been renting space inside the building, since their previous location had reached capacity. While the exact price the company paid to buy the building outright hasn’t been confirmed, previous reports state that its prior owners were looking to get about two billion dollars out of the deal, and the New York post gave the figure of 1.9 billion for the final price tag. Assuming that these figures are close to accurate, that makes this the single biggest real estate transaction in the United States in 2010, and despite a slew of acquisitions from the technology giant, it’s also the biggest single purchase Google has made this year.
In any case, the City of New York stands to gain in tax revenue and economic growth, the previous owners have made a pretty penny, the management company for the building has been retained, and Google is expanding its presence yet again. A good deal all around.
