What Google's $7BN Building Spree Means for Construction

Executive Producer and Narrator - Fred Mills
Producer - Adam Savage
Video Editing and Graphics - Jim Casey

CORRECTION: At 6:50 we say "nearly 7,000 square metres", which should say nearly 700,000 square metres.

#construction​ #architecture​ #google

Ripping and/or editing this video is illegal and will result in legal action.

© 2021 The B1M Limited

[jakehandley]

Haha I still rollerblade! Awesome video as per 👌🏻

[mattjackson]

Buy property as company = reducing taxable income
Buy property as a regular person = in debt for half your life

[Samuel_J]

Google's adventures into building and communities is interesting, but this video was pretty much perfect! Visuals, audio, content and jokes all top tier!

[jacobbernard]

It's strange to see walkable environmentally-sustainable corporate campuses in the middle of the soulless, car-dependent sprawl of Silicon Valley.

[MarkLeel]

Another brilliant video. Well detailed as usual.

[shawngbrennan]

“Google is set to bring 4, 000 new homes and some 20, 000 new workers to San Jose.” That is literally going to contribute even more to the housing shortage with a ratio like that :(

[ChilapaOfTheAmazons]

_"Optimizes team working"_ is corp-speak for very loud soulless open offices where it's impossible to concentrate and everyone is forced to wear heavy noise-cancelling headphones all day. 😢

[Yoj]

This left out the Chicago West loop office.... but west loop as a neighborhood is a whole video itself for B1M so I’ll just plant this comment here....

[harktischris]

6:38 "Affordable" housing has a specific, strict legal meaning in CA and in the US (it is not some loosey goosey PR term), which means rents/costs are set to be affordable to a households some percentage <100% of the area median income (for example, "low income" is defined as 80% of AMI, which means households making 20% less than the median income should be able to afford the housing). So, by statistical definition, it is in fact affordable to most residents.

edit: In fact, the inclusion of the below-market-rate housing is probably what is enabling Google to build so much housing there in the first place. California has a state level law (and some cities have their own supplementary law) that provides incentives to companies to provide below-market-rate housing, and in exchange they are able to exceed the allowable zoning limits (height, unit density, etc) and gain legal protections from the city or jurisdiction denying the project or rendering the project unviable with onerous restrictions (CA politics are historically infamously NIMBY about new housing, so these legal protections can be worth quite a lot). The bonus scales up the greater the amount of subsidized units you provide, and the lower % of area median income you target with those units.

[killernat]

Many people think Apple has a monopoly but that’s only within the apple ecosystem, google has the real monopoly, everyday pretty much everyone uses at least 1 google product, everyday, from the search engine, to maps, to reviews, etc

[Isomoar]

Everywhere is just going to be random Google buildings & Amazon fulfilment cubes in the near future...

[Jppnametaken]

Do NOT type Google into Google, it will break the internet.

[francoisg]

Good afternoon Fred & Co! Keep up the great on this channel and the B1M.👍🏻

[Nick-vubz]

'Apparently some people still do that' lol

[pbilk]

Darn, I hope the Toronto project went forward but without all the concerns of data collection. Toronto really needs to be less car-centric.

[Lemonickous]

Google : "You plebs, let me show you what's good for you all"
Everyone : "Yes my lord! I shall kiss thy feet"

[theivadim]

Awesome content! I am not interested in pursuing a career in construction but I still love watching your videos to learn more about how our urban world is built and what it takes to do it the right way.

[andrewsteavpack]

All of their buildings look so good on the interior and exterior, as long as they don't build big ugly boxes for offices I think it's a good thing. These look like college campuses and a lot of the spaces look to have high loss factors in the square footage which usually makes for more architecturally appealing and creative feeling spaces.

[cryptotrader]

Remember when Google's moto was "Don't be evil"? It's too bad they decided to turn their back on that moto when they deleted it 3 years ago.

[vec]

There’s 60, 000 empty homes in San Francisco now. I’m confused there is no housing shortage.