Google has set aside its automated search in favor of a manual search of the Boston-Cambridge area for new office space for its new east coast Googleplex, according to an article in the Boston Business Journal. Google executives have hired well-known real estate agency Trammell Crow Company to show them what is available in the area. The price-sensitive executives apparently are not looking in the high-rise buildings, which command higher per square foot rental rates, but rather in alternative areas that can provide 75,000 square feet upfront with an option to grow to over 200,000 square feet if necessary. The expansion could happen as early as the year’s end.
Google is looking in this college-town marketplace in order to find 1,000 mid-salary workers (ages 22-30), which are expected to inhabit the new weight roomed, grand piano-ed, video gamed, volley ball courted East Coast Googleplex compound. According to the Journal, “The ‘Googleplex’ concept features lava lamps in the lobby, exercise balls and bicycles in the hallway, recreation facilities that include a foosball table and roller hockey in the parking lot twice a week. Employees, or ‘googlers’ as they are called, work in groups of three or four people who share space with couches and pets.”
Apparently, the expansion queries have come after Google posted $1.2 billion in revenue in the first quarter this year. Of this amount, $584 million was generated through Google’s partner sites. It is clear now that Google has gone beyond Internet search. Google is expanding and crawling soon to a town near you.
