Category Archives: Google

Martin Sorrell, founder and chairman of media firm S4 Capital, believes the war in Ukraine has the potential to benefit three of America's biggest tech firms.

"I'm very bullish on the tech giants ... because the war will have an impact on them," Sorrell told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos Monday.

He added: "The big three Google (or Alphabet), Meta, and Amazon will benefit, I think, as a result of the war."

Explaining his reasoning, Sorrell said: "Defense means cyber defense and cyber offense so technology and technological companies become really important."

Sorrell stopped short of saying exactly how Alphabet, Meta and Amazon could benefit from this, but all three companies boast that their cyber security systems are world leading.

Google and Amazon also provide cloud computing infrastructure that governments and cyber companies can harness in cyber warfare.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Executive Chairman, S4 Capital.

Ein Noonan | Sportsfile | Getty Images | Web Summit

Google, Amazon and Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

The war in Ukraine is being fought both online and offline, with hackers on each side targeting the enemy's national infrastructure, businesses, governments and citizens.

Over the last few weeks, major tech stocks have plummeted amid concerns of persistently high inflation, rising interest rates and the risk of a global recession. The Nasdaqstock market declined 3.8% last week, falling for a seventh straight week. It's the longest losing streak for the tech-heavy index in 21 years.

Asked if the world is facing a second dot com bubble, Sorrell said there's already been a "massive correction," adding that some people think there could be a further correction of 5-10%.

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Google, Meta and Amazon will benefit from the Ukraine war, ad guru Martin Sorrell says - CNBC

Good news for Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 owners: the wait is over. Google Assistant is finally available for download starting today.

Google Assistant for Wear OS 3 is available for download in the Google Play Store and can be launched from the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classics app menu. However, you can also use voice commands to open Google Assistant or reprogram the watches home button as a shortcut.

This update has been a long time coming. When Google and Samsung first announced Wear OS 3, the companies promised that the unified platform would give Samsung smartwatch users more choice in apps. Previously, Samsungs Tizen-based smartwatches could only offer Bixby as a digital assistant. The idea was that Wear OS 3 would let consumers choose between Bixby and Google Assistant. The same would be true for apps like Google Pay.

Google Assistant has been notably absent from the Galaxy Watch 4 since its launch last year. Despite user frustrations, Google and Samsung continued to be vague about when Assistant would arrive, saying little more than coming soon.

However, it was clear the wait was coming to an end in the lead-up to this years Google I/O. First, Verizon accidentally implied Assistant was already available in an update log at the end of April. (It was not.) Then, a few days later, Samsung uploaded a teaser video to YouTube showing Assistant on the Galaxy Watch 4. Then, right after the Google I/O keynote earlier this month, Samsung confirmed that Assistant was arriving this summer.

The only surprising thing about todays announcement is how soon its arrived after I/O. (After all, its been less than two weeks since I/O, and its not even officially summer yet.) Then again, it makes a lot of sense that its shipping sooner rather than later. At I/O, Google emphasized it would include more Google services on the forthcoming Pixel Watch when it launches this fall and its hard to imagine a Pixel Watch without Assistant.

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Google Assistant is finally available on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 - The Verge

Googles Nest Wifi router and remote points are up to $100 off - The Verge Skip to main content clockmore-arrownoyes

Plus, deals on the Nest Hub Max, GoPro Hero 10, Xbox 2TB storage card, and more

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Only the best deals on Verge-approved gadgets get the Verge Deals stamp of approval, so if you're looking for a deal on your next gadget or gift from major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and more, this is the place to be.

There are many ways to get your weekend started right and, unsurprisingly, one of our favorites here at Verge Deals is with some quality tech deals. Teeing off first is the Google Nest Wifi mesh router system. Wellbots has a few different configurations of the Nest Wifi available with special discounts, including the standalone router for just $119 ($50 off when you use code 50VERGE at checkout), the router and one additional Point to extend the mesh network for $189 ($80 off with code 80VERGE), and the router plus two Points for $249 ($100 off with code 100VERGE).

The important thing here is to pick the right setup for your home depending on how much space you need to cover. The Nest Wifi router by itself is rated to cover up to 2,200 square feet, and adding just one Point to the mix extends that to 3,800. A home with a tricky layout or thicker walls may benefit from a Point or two to extend the mesh network, even if its not massive space. Theres a further benefit to adding a Point to the equation each one acts as a smart speaker for playing music, podcasts, and accessing the Google Assistant. So when it comes down to picking which of these Wi-Fi 5-capable setups is just right for you, consider the factors of coverage, convenience, and cost that are right for you. Read our review.

Googles Nest Wifi router and Point extender have an unassuming design. The router has two ethernet ports, while the Point can be used like a smart speaker. Use codes 50VERGE and 80VERGE for discounts at checkout from Wellbots.

Theres a great deal happening on 1Passwords subscription of services. New customers can sign up for one year of 1Passwords password manager service and get 50 percent off an individual plan or 50 percent off a family plan. Both are billed annually, with the family plan offering especially good value if you require more than one account.

The individual plan deal gets you one personal account with access across unlimited devices that costs just $17.94 for the first year of service, as opposed to the regular $36. As for the family plan, you get five accounts for $30 for the first year instead of the usual $60. Weve seen these 1Password deals drop as low as 60 percent off before, so while this one is not the very best it comes pretty close. If youre in need of protecting your personal data with an easy way to generate secure passwords (and we all are), its a good way to go.

1Passwords family subscription grants up to five people individual access to 1Passwords services. Typically $5 a month, this limited-time deal brings the price down to $2 a month for up to a year.

If youve got an Xbox Series X or Series S and you like to keep lots of games installed at once, their built-in storage can start to feel a lot more limiting than it sounds on paper at first. Many AAA-titles are 60GB or more each, with some like Call of Duty Warzone taking up nearly 100GB on its own. Yes, you can plug in a USB hard drive and offload some games into cold storage, but they have to moved back to the internal SSD when its time to play.

So, if you really want more storage, the 2TB Xbox Expansion Card from Seagate, which usually runs $399.99, is currently discounted to $380.90 at Amazon. I know that is still a pretty penny for 2,000GB (or roughly 21 more copies of Call of Duty Warzone), but these little expansion cards rarely go on sale. Theyre also just as fast as the internal storage of the Xbox Series X and S, and they plug into the rear of the console so theres no ugly USB cable and disc drive sitting alongside your Xbox.

Planning a fun getaway or excursion for the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend holiday? If you want something to help you record some memories while doing fun, outdoorsy activities, the GoPro Hero 10 Black with an additional battery and a dual battery charger is down to $399.99 at Amazon.

This is the latest action camera from GoPro, and while it looks a lot like the previous Hero 9, its much faster, thanks to its GP2 processor. The Hero 10 Black captures up to 5.3K 60fps footage and even 120fps slow-mo at 4K resolution. It also maintains that front-facing screen from its predecessor, so framing up your shot when mounting the camera on something like a bike is much easier. One of the few drawbacks to the Hero 10 is its mediocre battery life, but thats one of the reasons this deal is so great for about $400 you get an extra battery included, as well as a dual charger to easily keep both packs topped-up and ready. Read our review.

The GoPro Hero 10 Black offers a new processor making it possible to shoot in 4K resolution at 120 frames per second.

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Google's Nest Wifi router and remote points are up to $100 off - The Verge

Some of the finest American journalism is still being done by newspapers, said Adam Symson, president and CEO of The E.W. Scripps Company, one of the largest broadcast news companies in the United States.

And yet, unfortunately, as a result of the economic pressures that the newspaper industry is under, local newspapers in particular are losing their relevance and their reach, Symson said. And as a result of all of the downsizing, our industry is losing a lot of these fine journalists to other careers.

Symson, who became Scripps CEO in August 2017, said he wants to attract and retain the very best journalists. Thats why this week the broadcasting company announced the Scripps Journalism Journey Initiative, a multi-year initiative with Google that would help transition experienced journalists with primarily print news backgrounds into broadcast news careers. Selected journalists will be hired into full-time career positions in Scripps local and national media newsrooms. According to a press release, these positions may include beat/specialty reporter, specialty executive producer, photojournalist, editor/manager, documentary producer and copy editor.

In a written statement, David Brooks, Googles director of global news partnerships, called the initiative a great opportunity to support mid-career journalists looking for new challenges or a new direction to reignite the passion that drove them into journalism in the first place.

Symson said The E.W. Scripps Company has hired many print journalists over the last several years, but a lack of infrastructure to help with the training and development of these journalists has been a barrier to bringing in more. The program promises extensive training and support, including mentoring, job shadowing, hands-on work and individual coaching.

We intend to help the transition around writing skills, around understanding the difference between print writing and broadcast writing, around presentation, as the case may be if the person is going to make the transition to do on-air work. And if theyre not going to do on-air work, understanding the elements of producing pieces for television from a videography perspective, Symson said. We already think a lot of print photojournalists come to our newsrooms with the necessary video skills to be outstanding video journalists. Theres some nuance with the equipment that we use. Theres some understanding of how to work in our medium from a producing-of-the-story perspective, but (theyre) immediately transferable skills.

Asked about whether the company is interested in journalists who have been laid off or who want to transition out of print, Symson said any and all, including reporters, editors, photojournalists, data reporters, specialty reporters, executive editors and managers.

Symson said the creation of this new program has everything to do with the decline of print newspapers. He called the decline problematic because the industry loses journalists with every buyout or job action at a newspaper. He added that he wants to maintain a healthy journalism ecosystem and noted that what has kept some journalists with print backgrounds from joining broadcast newsrooms is the question of developing the skills necessary for the job.

Theyve already got the journalism part down, but they have to have the platform delivery down, he said. And so putting in place the infrastructure to be able to recruit, train and retain mid-career journalists and launch them into careers in Scripps newsrooms is the opportunity.

Applications for the Scripps Journalism Journey Initiative are expected to be available in early summer. Symson said he did not have a salary range for the positions, but emphasized that these are not entry-level roles. He said the range would depend on the market, and a role in management is also different.

To carry out the program, the company is currently hiring a team.

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Why Scripps and Google are recruiting print journalists to broadcast news - Poynter

Google Cloud unveiled its "SOC of the Future" today at the Google Cloud Security Summit. (Photo ... [+] Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Cybersecurity is a top priority for every organization. At least, it should be. The challenge is that the attack surface is expanding, and the threat landscape is adapting so quickly that it is increasingly difficult to keep up with the sheer volume of threatsnever mind effectively defend against them. At the Google Cloud Security Summit today, Google Cloud revealed plans for a SOC of the Future to help companies address these security challenges.

Google Cloud is a leading cloud platform, but it is also increasingly focused on cybersecurity as well. Google Cloud offers Chroniclea cloud service that enables customers to privately retain, analyze, and search massive amounts of security and network telemetry. Googles very DNA is built around the ability to comprehensively index and accurately search essentially all of the information available online. Chronicle takes that model and applies it specifically to security.

Google Cloud has also been busy investing to extend and enhance its security portfolio. Google Cloud partnered with Cybereasonmarrying Chronicle with the Cybereason Defense Platform to deliver Cybereason XDR powered by Google Cloud. The combination of Chronicle to normalize, index, correlate, and analyze data at scale, with the artificial intelligence and MalOp engine of Cybereason yields a powerful tool for defending against attacks.

Chronicle is not the only trick up Google Clouds sleeve, though. Google Cloud also includes VirusTotal, and the recently acquired SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation and Response) solution Siemplify. This arsenal of tools gives Google Cloud a powerful portfolio for cybersecurity.

That is where the SOC of the Future comes in. SOC, for those who dont know, is an acronym for Security Operations Centerthe heart cybersecurity for most organizations.

The core of this initiative is built around Googles Autonomic Security Operations (ASO). ASO is a collection of products, integrations, blueprints, technical content, and an accelerator program to enable customers to take advantage of Googles security operations expertise. The goal is to transform how people approach security challenges, how workflows are engineered to achieve secure outcomes, and how technologies can be leveraged to maximize their value.

I had a chance to speak with Jess Leroy, Google Cloud's Director of Product Management, about the vision for this initiative. Jess explained, The biggest problem in the industry when it comes to SOCs themselves is really that people have been doing things in a way for a long time now that is really no longer sustainable. The old model just doesn't work.

Why? Two reasons. Volume and speed. Jess shared a few statslike a 600% year-over-year growth in crimeware, and the fact that there is over 100 zettabytes of data out there. Meanwhile, threat actors are increasingly using automation to streamline attacks.

Combine that with more pressure for accountability in the C-suite. Jess noted a Gartner statistic that 75% of CEOs will be personally liable for cybersecurity incidents by 2025. He shared that he speaks to CISOs every week and that he sees growing concern over this.

The SOC of the Future will combine the elements of the Google Cloud security portfolio to help security teams evolve from the traditional SOC model to more modern and more agile security operations. Google Clouds goal is to enable more transparent collaboration between service providers and end customersand ensure every role receives relevant data to ensure fast response.

Part of that is based on telemetry. Jess said that most organizations are only using 30% or 40% of their telemetry. They are not correlating and analyzing all of the databecause they simply dont have a framework capable of doing it. They are making educated guesses based on partial snapshots. Chronicle allows Google Cloud to analyze 100% of the available telemetry.

Siemplify is another key element. The SOAR platform provides the ability to act on the analysis. Customized playbooks automate triage and response, which is crucial for keeping up with the volume of threats organizations face.

The SOC of the Future will do for the current SOC what the DevOps revolution did for the NOC [Network Operations Center], declared Sam Curry, CSO of Cybereason. The focus will be on the mission, and the metrics will reflect thatclosing pathways early and often, getting ahead of bad guys, and getting predictive.

Curry added that with this approach, tactical decisions will be based on risk, and that, The SOC of the Future will be extremely efficient in the use of peoples timewhich is the most valuable commodity.

Svetla Yankova, Google Cloud's Global Head of Customer Experience Engineering, walked me through a demonstration of the offering to show me how it analyzes and triages threats. Not only does it use 100% of the telemetry, but once a threat is detected it also has the ability to go back in time to identify and triage other potential instances of the same threat.

Of course, you can only go back as far as the data youve retained, but Google Cloud retains all of your data for a year by default. Hopefully 12 months is far enough to go back to find the first instance of a threat. If not, you probably have bigger issues.

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Google Cloud Launches SOC Of The Future - Forbes

Tim Cook, Apples chief executive, has a longstanding philosophy that Apple should continue to invest for the future amid a downturn. It more than doubled its staff during the Great Recession and nearly tripled its sales. Lately, it has increased bonuses to some hardware engineers by as much as $200,000, according to Bloomberg.

John Chambers, who steered Cisco Systems through multiple downturns as its former chief executive, said the companies strong businesses and deep pockets could afford them the chance to take risks that would be impractical for smaller competitors. During the 2008 downturn, he said Cisco allowed distressed automakers to pay for technology services with credit at a time when competitors demanded cash. The company risked having to write down $1 billion in inventory, but emerged from the recession as the dominant provider to a healthy auto industry, he said.

Companies break away during downturns, Mr. Chambers said.

Excelling will require disregarding the broader markets gloom, said David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School. He said previous downturns had shown that even the strongest businesses were susceptible to profit pressures and prone to pulling back. Firms get pessimistic like everyone else, he said.

The first test for the biggest companies in tech will be contagion from their peers. Amazons shares in the electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive have plunged more than 65 percent, a $7.6 billion paper loss. Apples services sales are likely to be crimped by a slowdown in advertising by app developers, which rely on venture-capital funding to finance their marketing, analysts say. And start-ups are scrutinizing their spending on cloud services, which will likely slow growth for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, analysts and cloud executives said.

People are trying to figure out how to spend smartly, said Sam Ramji, the chief strategy officer at DataStax, a data management company.

Regulatory challenges on the horizon could darken the big tech companies prospects, as well. Europes Digital Markets Act, which is expected to become law soon, is designed to increase the openness of tech platforms. Among other things, it could scuttle the estimated $19 billion that Apple collects from Alphabet to make Google the default search engine on iPhones, a change that Bernstein estimates could erase as much as 3 percent of Apples pretax profit.

But the companies are expected to challenge the law in court, potentially tying up the legislation for years. The probability it gets bogged down leaves analysts sticking to their consensus: Big Tech is going to be more powerful. And whats being done about it? Nothing, Mr. Kramer of Arete Research said.

Jason Karaian contributed reporting.

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Big Tech Is Getting Clobbered on Wall Street. Its a Good Time for Them. - The New York Times

NSO Group and its powerful Pegasus malware have dominated the debate over commercial spyware vendors who sell their hacking tools to governments, but researchers and tech companies are increasingly sounding the alarm about activity in the wider surveillance-for-hire industry. As part of this effort, Google's Threat Analysis Group is publishing details on Thursday of three campaigns that used the popular Predator spyware, developed by the North Macedonian firm Cytrox, to target Android users.

In line with findings on Cytrox published in December by researchers at University of Torontos Citizen Lab, TAG saw evidence that state-sponsored actors who bought the Android exploits were located in Egypt, Armenia, Greece, Madagascar, Cte dIvoire, Serbia, Spain, and Indonesia. And there may have been other customers. The hacking tools took advantage of five previously unknown Android vulnerabilities, as well as known flaws that had fixes available but that victims hadnt patched.

It's important to shine some light on the surveillance vendor ecosystem and how these exploits are being sold, says Google TAG director Shane Huntley. We want to reduce the ability of both the vendors and the governments and other actors who buy their products to throw around these dangerous zero-days without any cost. If theres no regulation and no downside to using these capabilities, then youll see it more and more.

The commercial spyware industry has given governments that dont have the funds or expertise to develop their own hacking tools access to an expansive array of products and surveillance services. This allows repressive regimes and law enforcement more broadly to acquire tools that enable them to surveil dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, political opponents, and regular citizens. And while a lot of attention has been focused on spyware that targets Apples iOS, Android is the dominant operating system worldwide and has been facing similar exploitation attempts.

We just want to protect users and find this activity as quickly as possible, Huntley says. We dont think we can find everything all the time, but we can slow these actors down.

TAG says it currently tracks more than 30 surveillance-for-hire vendors that have ranging levels of public presence and offer an array of exploits and surveillance tools. In the three Predator campaigns TAG examined, attackers sent Android users one-time links over email that looked like they had been shortened with a standard URL shortener. The attacks were targeted, focusing on just a few dozen potential victims. If a target clicked on the malicious link, it took them to a malicious page that automatically began deploying the exploits before quickly redirecting them to a legitimate website. On that malicious page, attackers deployed Alien, Android malware designed to load Cytrox's full spyware tool, Predator.

As is the case with iOS, such attacks on Android require exploiting a series of operating system vulnerabilities in sequence. By deploying fixes, operating system makers can break these attack chains, sending spyware vendors back to the drawing board to develop new or modified exploits. But while this makes it more difficult for attackers, the commercial spyware industry has still been able to flourish.

We cant lose sight of the fact that NSO Group or any one of these vendors is just one piece of a broader ecosystem, says John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab. We need collaboration between platforms so that enforcement actions and mitigations cover the full scope of what these commercial players are doing and make it harder for them to continue.

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Google TAG: Cytrox's Predator Spyware Used to Target Android Users - WIRED

Google has released its annual diversity report, and the company says it made some positive progress over the past year. The company saw its largest increases in representation of Black and Latinx Googlers in the US ever at 20 percent and 8 percent respectively year over year, according to chief diversity officer Melonie Parker. Google also reported improved leadership representation of Black, Latinx and Native American employees by 27 percent, Parker says.

But some data shows there is still more work to be done. The companys US workforce is 33.5 percent women and 66.5 percent men, numbers that are only slightly different than the 32.2 percent women and 67.8 percent men reported in 2021. And in its 2022 report, Google said 48.3 percent of its US workers are white, while 43.2 percent are Asian, 6.9 percent are Latinx, 5.3 percent are Black, and 0.8 percent are Native American.

The company does provide a vast amount of information about its statistics, and you can dig into all of it on the 2022 Diversity Annual Report website and in the PDF version of the report. And Google appears to be committed to moving the needle, saying that as we continue to build a more inclusive and representative Google, well hold ourselves accountable in how we work to make our goals a reality.

Google came under scrutiny for its diversity policies after it fired prominent AI ethicist Timnit Gebru, who is Black, in December 2020. The company made changes to its diversity and research policies two months later.

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Google reports increased Black and Latinx representation in the US - The Verge

CEO of Alphabet and Google Sundar Pichai

Mateusz Wlodarczyk | Nurphoto | Getty Images

A new bipartisan proposal takes aim at Google and would force it to break up its digital advertising business if passed.

The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act was introduced Thursday by a group of key senators on the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust: the ranking member and chair, Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as well as Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

Advertising is a huge part of parent company Alphabet's business. In Q1, Alphabet reported $68.01 billion in revenue, $54.66 billion of which was generated by advertising up from $44.68 billion the year prior.

The bill would ban companies that process more than $20 billion annually in digital ad transactions from participating in more than one part of the digital ad process, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

Google infamously has a hand in multiple steps of the digital ad process, a business that has become the focus of a state-led antitrust lawsuit against the company. Google runs an auction, or exchange, where ad transactions are made and also runs tools to help companies sell and buy ads. If the new legislation passed, it would have to choose in which part of the business it would want to remain.

"When you have Google simultaneously serving as a seller and a buyer and running an exchange, that gives them an unfair, undue advantage in the marketplace, one that doesn't necessarily reflect the value they are providing," Lee told the Journal in an interview. "When a company can wear all these hats simultaneously, it can engage in conduct that harms everyone."

"Advertising tools from Google and many competitors help American websites and apps fund their content, help businesses grow, and help protect users from privacy risks and misleading ads," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "Breaking those tools would hurt publishers and advertisers, lower ad quality, and create new privacy risks. And, at a time of heightened inflation, it would handicap small businesses looking for easy and effective ways to grow online. The real issue is low-quality data brokers who threaten Americans' privacy and flood them with spammy ads. In short, this is the wrong bill, at the wrong time, aimed at the wrong target."

The coalition behind the bill underscores the way support for reining in tech power through antitrust reform cuts across ideological lines. It's also notable that Lee, the top Republican on the subcommittee, led the bill, given he has opposed some of the other antitrust reforms on the table from Klobuchar and others.

Klobuchar, as chair of the subcommittee, has led an effort to get competition reforms passed this year. So far, two major bills have stood out as having a fighting chance of becoming law if Congress moves on them in time: the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prevent dominant platforms from favoring their own products over those of competitors that rely on their services, and the Open App Markets Act, which would have a similar impact but focuses on app stores like those from Apple and Google. Lee supported the latter, but not the former, during committee votes.

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WATCH: Here's why some experts are calling for a breakup of Big Tech after the House antitrust report

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New bipartisan bill would force Google to break up its ad business - CNBC

Google's eye-catching, 1.1 million-square-foot campus on the edge of the bay is finally complete and open to employees, marking a major expansion of the tech company's office footprint on the Peninsula.

The Bay View campus, located on NASA Ames property off of Moffett Boulevard, will be able to house roughly 4,000 employees across two large and uniquely designed office buildings. The sloped, pavilion-like roofing is clad with large, prismatic glass shingles that generate solar power for the facility, layered in a pattern that the company calls a "dragonscale" solar skin.

Inside, the offices are filled with natural lighting and vibrant colors, with lighthearted-themed areas, or "districts," such as the "Turkey Terrace" and the "Campfire Corner," the latter with meeting rooms modeled to look like tents. The so-called Plankton Palace has a light display shimmering up a stalk of faux seaweed.

The Bay View campus has been in the works for close to a decade, with plans solidifying in 2017 following a long-term lease with NASA Ames. Google's subsidiary, Planetary Ventures, inked a contract with the agency to lease 42 acres for $3.65 million in annual rent.

The company broke ground in 2017, and as of last week began inviting employees to trickle in albeit with plenty of construction workers still working on the finishing touches.

In a tour of the campus Monday, Dave Radcliffe, Google's vice president of real estate and workplace services, said this is a big moment for the company. Most of Google's offices have been inherited or leased, but Bay View marks a rare opportunity to build something new and purposefully built to support the company's workforce.

"This is the first time ... we've been able to move Googlers into a building that we were able to design from the ground up, and so it's an exciting time for us," Radcliffe said.

Even before COVID-19 abruptly forced tech companies in the Bay Area to work from home, the design for Bay View took into account telecommuting and the reality that Google's leadership, candidly, cannot precisely know what the workplace will look like in 20 or 50 years, Radcliffe said. Instead, the company sought to create a flexible workplace environment that can transform numerous times in order to meet new demands.

The first floor, with its art exhibits, food services, couches and giant camel statue, is meant to be an "activation space," Radcliffe said. It's where employees can come in a few times a week for "intentional collaboration" with colleagues, the kind of thing that can be tricky to do from home. The second level is closer to a traditional office setting where Googlers can get work done in a distraction-free environment, but even then there are no defined walls, cubicles or corner offices.

The hybrid work schedule means Bay View needs to accommodate team-focused work, said Michelle Kaufmann, Google's director of real estate and workplace services, research and development. The floor plan, desks and furniture are all movable and interchangeable, with a mix of both group desks and quiet enclosed booths.

"Rather than have the traditional office, which was fixed desks and closed meeting rooms kind of a one-size-fits-all for everyone this new workplace is really about having a much wider range of space types for the activities people are going to be coming back to do," Kaufmann said.

While Bay View's sloped roofs are designed to accommodate 90,000 solar panels and capture energy at all hours of the day, the high steel canopy is also angled to let in plenty of daylight without causing any glare. The opera hall-shaped ceiling, along with acoustic decking and soft materials throughout the building, strike a balance that keeps the office from sounding too loud or too quiet, Kaufmann said.

Google is also touting the new campus' environmentally friendly design, including the largest geothermal pile system in North America. The system involves pipes that run 80 feet underground that can be used to transfer excess heat from the building, which can then be stored for future use during the winter, said Asim Tahir, director of energy and carbon for the company's real estate and workplace services.

The geothermal system means Google will save about 5 million gallons of water each year, and can completely ditch natural gas for heating the building, which is all-electric. The plan is to fully eliminate Bay View's carbon footprint.

"This building will operate with carbon-free energy 90% of the time, and we're hoping through operational improvements we'll over the years get to the full 100%," Tahir said.

A large portion of the leased 42-acre property remains open space, including meadows and marshes, creating a buffer between the newly opened tech campus and the bay coastline. North of the office buildings is a large parking garage next door to multiple buildings with a total of 220 suites similar to motel rooms, built for people visiting Google who need to stay for extended periods.

Bay View is one of multiple Google office developments underway in and around Mountain View. The company's 595,000-square-foot Charleston East campus is still under construction and is expected to finish next year, and the Mountain View City Council approved a third office proposal, the Google Landings project, in 2020. Charleston East is expected to house up to 2,700 Google employees.

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Google opens the doors on its massive Bay View campus next to NASA Ames - Palo Alto Online