SciFoo 08 is one long, mindbending highlight. Picking out individual sessions is tricky. Jenny and Avi have given their faves, and I’ll write up mine shortly. But first, I’d like to take you on a tour of the venue: Google’s Mountain View headquarters known as the Googleplex.
The buildings themselves are not spectacular to the casual eye—simple grey boxes spread around a leafy campus. But inside and out, they are peppered with clever solutions to improve the working environment.
The tour started with a trip up onto the roof. Californians in general, and Google in particular, are big on solar panels. The Googleplex contains something like 9000 panels, producing 1.6 MegaWatts and a third of the company’s energy supply. This makes the Googleplex one of the USA’s largest corporate solar installations. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take photos on the roof, so here’s one Google made earlier.
Click for higher resolution
Heading inside, the first thing you notice is food. Everywhere. One source estimates that Google spends some $72 million a year feeding its employees. It’s company policy that employees must be located within a few feet of free food. Kitchens can be found throughout the complex, containing gratis snacks and drinks and each employee can claim two full meals per day at no cost. The only exception is a snack machine filled with high-fat-and sugar goods, where you pay on the basis of calories rather than monetary value. It’s a good job they have a volleyball court to work off all that energy.
Amongst all the office furniture are a few novelties. Knowing Google, you’d expect to find yurt-style meeting rooms and play areas filled with Lego and other creative tools. Pool tables, antique arcade games and massage chairs lurk in quiet corners. All of this I could have predicted. But a London phone box painted in Google livery? Or a full-size replica of SpaceShipOne? At Nature, we’re lucky if we get a few pot plants; Google has giant cacti. But beware of the undergrowth, you never know what might be lurking in there.
A measure of Google’s success is that people love the brand enough to buy merchandise. The company has its own shop on-site, which sells objects as diverse as Google-branded cycling tops, beach towels and baby clothes. Would you buy a Microsoft beanbag or, for that matter, a Nature Network lip balm?
More images over on my Flickr photostream.
I was tempted but resisted on buying a blogger T-shirt – orange and brown is really not my color.
Speaking of Microsoft, I am currently driving a rental car which to my large horror has a tag next to the automatic gear that says ‘powered by microsoft’ (no kidding).
Very nice photos btw!
I would get so fat if I worked there.
I love the solar panels though – I had no idea that they produce so much of their own energy.
I probably wouldn’t buy any Google branded products, but I did call one of my cats Google. She has white goggle marks around her eyes and likes to search things, especially cupboards and fridges.
Google is keen on clean transportation
Great Account, Matt! 1.6 MegaWatts is quite a lot indeed.
On the inside, the simple and functional rainbow of cables at every desk were pretty cool too! No grovelling around under the table to plug your laptop in! These small details make a big difference…
Sounds (and looks) fantastic! Love the dinosaur skeleton and the plethora of solar panels. We have cactus and yucca gardens on our campus, as well as sand volleyball courts, but sadly, no dinosaurs.
That looks incredible! Sadly, the most exciting thing in my office is the mini label-maker.
Your description does remind me a little of the Simpson’s episode where Homer gets a new job at the fictional Globex Corporation. Except Google is, of course, not looking for world domination.
Great post, Matt! I’m sorry I didn’t go on the Google tour, but there were too many choices!
Great pics… did you say something (on Jenny’s blog) about having some video, too? Looking forward to seeing it.
I’ve made a couple posts, but intend to make many more in the coming weeks, including pics.
Thanks.
Brian Malow
ScienceComedian.com/blog
Sounds (and looks) fantastic! Love the dinosaur skeleton and the plethora of solar panels. We have cactus and yucca gardens on our campus, as well as sand volleyball courts, but sadly, no dinosaurs.
Hmmm…we have homeless crack-heads and policemen…
When I went last year I was blown away by the freebies, including a smart bound, blank book (used now for roughing out novels), a cool SciFoo T-shirt (proudly worn by by Gee Minor), and something I have always wanted — a 3-D model of our corner of the Galaxy, with the Sun at its centre and the nearest stars out to maybe twenty or so light-years, done as a transparent (and pleasingly weighty) plastic cube.
Yup, Brian, I took some video of the flying car and the hubbub inside the main hall. I’ll stick them online pretty soon – I still need to get them off my camera.