Google Doubles Down on the Office, Buying London Site for $1 Billion

[areyentiraidhi]

Tech giant says it is confident in the future of the physical workplace

 

 

LONDON—Google plans to spend $1 billion buying office space it already uses in central London, saying it believes office work will remain vital for the tech giant.

The purchase of the site, called Central Saint Giles, near the British Museum, comes as the Alphabet Inc. unit is building a separate, massive new U.K. headquarters about a mile and a half away, next to London’s King’s Cross train station.

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The purchase “represents our continued confidence in the office as a place for in-person collaboration and connection,” said Ronan Harris, Google’s vice president for the U.K. and Ireland, in a blog post on Friday.

Google said it plans to renovate the office it purchased to add outdoor covered working areas, as well as “team pods,” which it describes as flexible spaces that can be reconfigured for individual or collaborative work. The offices will also feature “campfires,” circular areas with screens interspersed. The design of the campfires, currently being piloted in Google’s U.S. locations, is to promote parity between people attending meetings in person and those calling in virtually, the company said.

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Like many companies, Google has adjusted its work-from-home policies throughout the pandemic. But it has also signaled repeatedly its expectation that offices will continue to be a central part of working for the company. Early last year, it said it would spend $7 billion expanding its footprint of offices and data centers across the U.S., including pouring $1 billion into its home state of California.

Central Saint Giles’s multicolored buildings in central London.

PHOTO: AARON CHOWN/ZUMA PRESS

In September, Google said it would buy a New York City office building for $2.1 billion, one of the priciest U.S. deals ever.

Last year, Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said Google would move to a hybrid workweek in which employees work from the office three days a week. “The future of work is flexibility,” he said at the time. It then required U.S. employees to return to the office on Jan. 10, but postponed those plans last month as the Omicron variant began spreading.

The company said it would wait until later this year to decide when its latest office-return plan would take effect. It encouraged employees meanwhile to voluntarily “continue coming in where conditions allow, to reconnect with colleagues in person and start regaining the muscle memory of being in the office more regularly.”

Google said it has more than 6,400 employees in the U.K., having added almost 700 last year. It will have capacity for 10,000 employees when the construction of its new London complexes is complete.

 

 

 

[sureshkonda]

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