News Google buys New York office building for $1.9 billion

Google has spent a reported $1.9 billion on buying its New York office building outright.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/12/23/google-new-york-building/1

 

Amazing what you can buy when you use every trick in the book to avoid paying taxes in every country you operate in...

 

"Do you think Google has made a shred investment decision"

No, but it may be shrewd?

 

Fixed - thanks.

 

Its obviously up to Google how they spend money but why does an 'e-company' require such a prominent city centre location? They could build a purpose designed office out of the city for a fraction of the cost.

 

And in other news Steve Balmer restarts development of Flight Simulator XI...

 

This is very true. For that sort of money they could of build an enormous office building that when viewed from above either spelt "Google" or "Look how much money we have sitting around to splurge".

 

It makes sense to buy the building since they already let parts of it. Not only will it reduce Google's operating costs by several million a year they will also have a steady income from the other tenants in the building. These are the figures that are important to stock holders.

 

Sorry how else can you count a billion?

 

(Quickly opens wallet) Well, Let me see. . . 1. . . .2. . . 3. .

 

A million million, although pretty much no-one uses that any more - other than a few starchy old farts & the occasional pedant, all trying to make some sort of point...

 

Sorry, that wasn't meant as a dig at you Gareth by the way - I'm sure you just wrote it like that to pre-empt anyone 'correcting' you...

 

actually... a billion is considered a million million in a lot of european countries still... in Portugal we still use the "thousand millions" definition to speak of US billions

 

actually a million million is 1 trillion

1million= 1,000,000
1 billion = 1,000,000,000
1 trillion= 1,000,000,000,000

 

Are you a short type, Shanky?

 

Maybe they can actually provide support to AdSense and AdWords publishers now..

Anywhoo, this isn't too surprising I guess. Google spends billions per quarter on buying assets (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-acquisition-tally-hits-16-billion-2010-10-29 etc). And as M7ck says, this makes pretty good sense especially since they're already renting part of the building.

 

Billion=million.million is the old imperial way of counting back when a barrel was 33.3gallons(uk), now the international standard is; billion=thousand.million and a barrel is 42gallons(us) thing change over time for convenience... or something...

 

In a sense, Google have brought a chunk of Apple!

 

Can we stop with the 1 billion = 10^9 or 10^12? It's boring.

 

Well in my mind an e-company still needs employees and now they have a major hub in a major city on the east coast as well as the west coast. For people like me who are on the east coast in the USA and plan to be here for a few years its a serious draw. Google takes phenomenal care of there employees from what I've heard and read. So they are likely to bring in people who are highly qualified, but located on the east coast and not willing to relocate. Speaking from my position, there are several positions I've see posted for Google that I would love to apply for but I'm just not willing to move that far right now. With an east coast location (assuming similar jobs are available) it makes the situation much more appealing to me.

just my .02