Google HQ: The Google culture

[Animo]

image hosted on flickr

Above Google, Mountain View, California by cocoi_m, on Flickr

[Animo]

By Lisa M. Krieger, San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A new study confirms it: Google is altering your brain. More precisely, our growing dependence on the Internet has changed how — and what — our brains choose to remember.

When we know where to find information, we're less likely to remember it — an amnesia dubbed "The Google Effect" by a team led by psychologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University.

Goodbye, soul-searching; hello, facts-at-fingertips.

[Animo]

NEW YORK—US stocks rose Friday after a blockbuster earnings report from Google and a pair of multibillion-dollar takeover bids helped overshadow the debt-ceiling debacle in Washington.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 42.61 points (0.34 percent) to close at 12,479.73.

The broader S&P 500 climbed 7.27 points (0.56 percent) to 1,316.14, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rallied 27.13 points (0.98 percent) to close at 2,789.80.

Google pushed up the Nasdaq, rising 13.0 percent after it reported late Thursday that its second-quarter net income climbed to $2.51 billion on record-high revenue of more than $9 billion.

US billionaire investor Carl Icahn made an unsolicited offer to buy Clorox in a deal valued at $12.6 billion, pushing Clorox stock up 8.9 percent.

In another major deal, Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton unveiled a $12.1 billion takeover of US natural gas firm Petrohawk Energy Corp., leading Petrohawk’s shares to skyrocket 62.5 percent.

The Google, Clorox and Petrohawk news “certainly set a positive tone to start the day,” said Michael James, senior equity trader with Wedbush Morgan Securities.

“There are still unresolved issues in Europe regarding the sovereign debt issues and the debt ceiling talks (in Washington). It is going to be a weight on the market limiting upside until it gets resolved,” James added.

US President Barack Obama warned of economic “Armageddon” if Democrats and Republicans fail to reach a deal to raise the federal government’s debt limit to avert a potentially disastrous default by August 2.

Europe’s economic picture improved slightly after the European Union’s bank regulator announced that only eight of 91 banks had flunked the latest round of stress tests, fewer than expected.

Shares of Citigroup sank 1.6 percent after the banking giant released its second-quarter earnings.

Citigroup’s net income increased to $3.3 billion in the April-June period, up 24 percent from the same period last year, but its stock sank after the company said its expenses this year would be higher than forecast.

Toy-maker Mattel, creator of the Barbie doll, gained 1.9 percent after reporting that second-quarter net income grew 56 percent from the same period last year.

Bond prices were mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 2.91 percent from 2.94 percent late Thursday, while that on the 30-year bond climbed to 4.25 percent from 4.24 percent.

Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

[Animo]

By Emil Protalinski, TechSpot.com
Published: July 15, 2011, 5:00 PM EST

During Google's second quarter earnings call yesterday, the company announced it has now seen 6 billion apps installed on Android. The search giant also noted that Android was now seeing 550,000 device activations per day, up from 500,000 just over two weeks ago.

It took Google 20 months to reach the 1 billion apps installed on the Android platform. Five months later, the company had hit the 2 billion apps installed milestone. Two months later, the company was at 3 billion apps installed. That last milestone was reached three months ago. In other words, the company is seeing some 1 billion apps downloaded every month.

Because Android is open, however, the platform's users can download apps from more than one app store. For example, Amazon launched its own Android App Store just last month.

To put the 6 billion number into perspective, Apple announced earlier this month that it had seen 15 billion downloaded apps on iOS. Apple saw 1 billion apps downloaded in April 2009. In April 2011, the company passed the 10 billion apps downloaded mark. While Apple's app downloads are growing, Google's app downloads are not only growing, but they are accelerating as well.

In short, because Android phone sales are growing so quickly, Google's app downloads are going to soon catch Apple's numbers. That's impressive, given that Google's Android Market has over 200,000 apps as of December 2010 while Apple's App Store has over 300,000 apps as of September 2010. It's also expected that the number of apps for Android will eventually pass the number of apps available for iOS.

[Animo]

MOUNTAIN VIEW—Google Inc. is the single largest contributor to the coffers of Mountain View, where it is based. But as the Web giant expands its physical footprint and seeks to build new offices, housing and infrastructure, the city government is pushing back.

Earlier this month several city council members criticized a proposal by Google to build bridges over a creek that separates existing offices from land it leased from a federal agency. Starting in 2013, Google plans to construct up to 1.2 million square feet of buildings on the land, including offices, recreation facilities and corporate housing.

The new development will extend the Google campus into the leased land, crossing public trails along Stevens Creek that are used by commuters and outdoor enthusiasts. While the trail will remain public after Google's expansion, council members said at a recent hearing they were concerned about the need to relocate part of the trail due to the construction of the bridges, among other things. The topic will be revisited in future hearings.

Such questioning of Google's plans might become more common. In what would be a first for Google, the company has signaled it wants to tear down some of its existing buildings and replace them with denser ones as well as with corporate housing. Google leases or owns more than four million square feet of office space in Mountain View, according to the city.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...te_LeftTopNews

[azza-bazoo]

Originally Posted by Animo

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...te_LeftTopNews

That story would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. The Stevens Creek trail is nice enough, but suffers from poor connections to nearby streets; Google proposes improving them, and the city objects?

Elsewhere in the article it mentions a Google plan to demolish buildings and put up slightly more dense ones (not very dense, it's still a suburban office park, but an improvement on the two-storey 1970s trash that's there) ... and the councilor they quote complains about parkland nearby. Sigh.

I guess these complaints aren't new, though: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=2527

[Animo]

The award winning sustainable German architecture firm, Ingenhoven Architects, has been hired by Google Inc to design their new headquarters in Mountain View, California. Expected to begin construction in 2012, Ingenhoven approached the design with the idea that ‘the architecture should be an expression of the „corporate culture” and at the same time a model for sustainable architecture in the broadest sense surpassing the LEED-Platinum-Standards with its holistic concept’. Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman shared about Ingenhoven, “we’ve asked them to build the most green, sustainable building possible.”

Google’s offices in Milan, previously featured on ArchDaily can be viewed here. More about this exciting news from the architects following the break.


The rise of Google Inc. Is a phenomenal success story that has just begun. More than 80% of all searches world-wide are done using Google. The growth of the company is mirrored in the growth of the Google Campus in Mountain View/California, the Headquarters of Google on Charleston Park. Google is proud of its corporate culture and offers attractive workplaces in order to attract the best talents from all over the world. Google wants to build a showcase sustainable building. On the adjacent site between Charleston Road and Shoreline Boulevard a large new building will be built for Google. The site demands a building with autarkic geometry. As part of an international selection process ingenhoven architects won the commission to design the new HQ. The client’s brief was simple: It should be the best and „greenest” building in the world!

The new building will be home for 2.500-3.000 engineers and scientists as well as the Headquarters. The Google Headquarters is the first project for ingenhoven architects in the US and Google builds for itself for the first time. Google‘s success depends on engineers, inventors mathematicians, IT-experts and scientists of all kinds. The building should reflect their different approaches and enhance convenience and productivity. The building will be „lively, fresh, simple and flexible” and offer healthy, communicative and effective workplaces and have „buzz“.

Sustainable and ecologically oriented architecture is for Ingenhoven Architects a negotiated agreement. All our projects are orientated on international standards, like LEED, BREEAM, ASHRAE, Swiss Minergy, European Standard 2000 or DGNB, whose founding member we are.

The use of regenerative energies and resources like geothermal energy and rainwater plays an important role in our concepts and so the intensive integration of daylight as well a natural ventilation of buildings. With a minimum consumption of energy and resources we aim the highest degree of utilization comfort.

http://www.archdaily.com/157521/goog...mountain-view/