Googleplex expansion to include 'Experience Center,' test labs
Web giant is spending $120 million to beef up its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, according to filings with the city reviewed by the San Jose Mercury News.
Google has big plans for Googleplex.
The company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters will soon welcome a 120,000-square-foot "Google Experience Center" that will serve as a combination private museum and meeting area, according to a San Jose Mercury News report. The $120 million expansion will also reportedly house labs to test secret projects such as the company's "@home" project--rumored to be a home entertainment device.
The Google Experience Center would allow the Web giant "to share visionary ideas, and explore new ways of working" with up to 900 guests at a time, Google said in documents filed with the city of Mountain View and viewed by the newspaper.
"The Experience Center would not typically be open to the public--consisting of invited groups, and guests whose interests will be as vast as Google's range of products, and often confidential," Andrew Burnett, an architect working on the project, explained in a letter late last year to Mountain View officials. "Therefore, the Experience Center must also operate somewhat like a museum, exhibit, or mercantile space allowing flexibility in the exhibits so that as Google's products and needs change, the space can adapt."
A lab for a division referred to as "Google/@home" is designed to screen out radio frequency signals, allowing the company to test wireless consumer technology, a Google real estate official told Mountain View officials in a letter last year.
The Google/@home "RF screen room will be used to test the Wifi performance and development of a consumer product," Lewis Darrow said in the letter.
The company is working on a home entertainment device that would "stream music wirelessly throughout the home" and be marketed under Google's name, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.