HiFi Geek

HEADQUARTERS OF GOOGLE

“The Googolplex” is the headquarters of Google in California which means a googolplex being 1010100, or a one followed by a googol of zeros as the HQ is a complex of buildings. The lobby has a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters and projection of search queries on the wall with the hallways full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee can access the corporate recreation center. 

Recreational amenities are scattered through the campus including workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, a baby grand piano, a pool table and ping pong, the recording room, snack rooms with various foods and drinks. Google moved into 311,000 square feet of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Ave in Manhattan designed and built for Google housing its largest advertising sales team that was instrumental in securing large partnerships, most recently deals with MySpace and AOL.

 They added an engineering staff in New York City responsible for more than 100 engineering projects including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets etc. The building costs Google US$10 million per year as rent and has similar design and functionality to its Mountain View headquarters, including foosball, air hockey, and ping-pong tables and video game area. 

The size of search system is undisclosed. The site referred by the media as Project 02, was chosen for the availability of inexpensive hydroelectric power and large surplus of fiber optic cable. The computing center is the size of two football field that has created hundreds of construction jobs, causing local real estate prices to increase 40%. Google is taking steps to ensure that their operations are environmentally sound. The company had announced to install thousands of solar panels to provide upto 1.6 megawatts of electricity, to satisfy approx. 30% of the campus’ energy needs. The system is the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and the largest on any corporate site in the world.