MOUNTAIN VIEW, California -- Google was expected to announce plans Wednesday to build a new 1-million-square foot corporate campus at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, according to a published report.
Google, the internet's leading search company, is expected to build on NASA property at a now-vacant site in the heart of Silicon Valley, which will include offices, housing and roads, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing unidentified sources.
"There is some land at Ames Research Center that could offer logical expansion space for Google,'' company spokeswoman Lynn Fox said Tuesday. She declined to comment directly on the building plans.
The company has scheduled an afternoon news conference with Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and Scott Hubbard, director at NASA Ames, a space research center since 1939 that has recently been cutting staff as part of the agency's nationwide restructuring.
Rapid growth in web advertising tied to online searches has fueled Google's stellar performance in recent years. The company has $7 billion in cash from stock offerings and huge profits. It hired 10 employees each business day in the last quarter and has a global staff of nearly 4,200.
Some observers say the partnership between Google and NASA Ames could create a new hub of technological innovation in Silicon Valley, an area gutted by the tech bust and still reeling from corporate evacuations.
The new campus could have an impact similar to the Xerox Park in nearby Palo Alto, which served as an epicenter for industry innovation until Xerox significantly cut staffing and investment in the area in recent years, said Geoffrey Bowker, executive director of Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology and Society.
The company is rapidly outgrowing its current office space, and plans to keep its current five-building headquarters, known as the Googleplex, nearby. It also plans to continue leasing office space elsewhere, sources said.
At 1 million square feet, the new campus would put Google in the same league as other Silicon Valley tech companies such as Oracle and Yahoo.
The new facility would be larger than filmmaker George Lucas' new complex in San Francisco's Presidio and nearly as big as the 52-story office tower in the Bank of America Center in San Francisco's Financial District.
