Google announces $1 billion expansion in New York City

Google has announce it will spend more than $1 billion to build a new campus in New York City, a major expansion that could add more than 7,000 jobs to the area.

The announcement comes just days after Apple said it will build new offices across the United States, a plan that includes adding hundreds of jobs in New York. Amazon.com said earlier that it will establish another headquarters in Queens, pulling in tens of thousands of highly paid workers.

“New York City continues to be a great source of diverse, world-class talent – that’s what brought Google to the city in 2000 and that’s what keeps us here,” said Ruth Porat, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Google and its parent company Alphabet.

Google’s New York campus, dubbed Google Hudson Square, will span more than 1.7 million square feet, encompassing multiple leased buildings on Hudson Street and Washington Street, Porat said in a blog post.

Google already employs more than 7,000 people in New York City who work on teams at the core of the company’s operations, including search, advertising, maps and YouTube, the company said. Over the next decade, the Hudson Square campus has the capacity to more than double Google’s New York head count.

The moves by West Coast tech giants to fortify their presence in New York highlight the city’s ascendance as a technology stronghold and its massive talent pool of educated, skilled workers who fuel innovation. But the planned expansions there have also drawn criticism.

Policymakers, economists and community activists point to rising real estate prices and strained public infrastructure in the marquee tech hubs of Seattle and San Francisco as examples of the painful drawbacks of tech industry growth.

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Google plans to begin its move by 2020, the company said, and the campus will become the primary location for its global business organisation.

Washington Post