Is Google’s Expansion Proposal a Form of City Colonization?
When designing Google’s future headquarters, the main designer of Google’s headquarters, Heatherwick, commented on the beautiful blueprints before the construction: “Looking at these airship hangars, it suddenly became clear,” said Heatherwick. “There were big, flexible volumes in which you could adapt and change over time” (Heatherwick, 2012). As a high school student, I walk down the main street of Mountain View every day after school to go home, and whenever I pass through the enormous structure of Google’s headquarters, I always dream of visiting the park and possibly working there one day. Having a gigantic structure designed in a futuristic style inspires many young people to work for the company, fulfilling both personal and professional goals for the main designer himself; as a result, the city of Mountain View has profited from land tax by more than 160 million dollars in total (Tripomatic, 2022). Google hopes to expand into the city of Mountain View in the far future.
However, critics voice their concern about Google’s further expansion into Mountain View. The cooperation between big companies and small cities is not always a “dream come true” scenario. Roughly two years ago, Mountain View rejected the expansion proposal offered by Google. So, what happened? After the construction of Google’s headquarters in 2012, Google proposed another new campus construction plan that required the city of Mountain View to sacrifice approximately two million square feet of land; as a response, Google offered community benefits such as additional funding for housing and donations for public transportations. But, the result was a surprising rejection from the Mountain View city government, voting four to three against the campus expansion. Given the large number of benefits provided by these high-tech companies, the requests are undeniably important to the frontier of technological innovation. It is never the city’s obligation to refuse a company’s wishes; thus, this recent rejection from the city government poses an unprecedented yet a critical question to the industries of companies around the world: “How should we find the balance that allows both big companies and small cities to mutually benefit without hurting each other?” While big scale companies may think that providing large amounts of community benefits and conducting numerous civic projects for the city is helpful, I support the idea that the coordination between big companies and city governments should be reworked and readjusted. These community benefit packages offered by the big companies often fail to prioritize the civic interest based on the necessity of the city government and local residents.
To understand the importance of Mountain View from an economic perspective, we shall analyze the advantages of living in the city and the aspects that other cities cannot replace. Mountain View is not just one city but a group of cities, surrounded by their neighboring cities such as Palo Alto and Sunnyvale, and is also near Stanford University, one of the most prestigious universities around the world. Today, Mountain View is home to many of the world’s largest technology companies, with nearly 500 technology companies gathered here, such as Microsoft, LinkedIn, Amazon, Samsung, and other world-renowned corporations and powerful start-up companies. Here, the expansion of its headquarters clearly shows Google’s interest in joining what I call the “Tech Kingdom,” utilizing Mountain View’s exclusive networking to hundreds of high-tech companies. Why would the city officials refuse such a beneficial and prosperous offer that would benefit both Google and the city of Mountain View?
It all comes down to financial conflicts between Mountain View and Google. In the U.S., businesses and personal sales taxes are the primary sources of tax revenue (Bunn, 2022). Although Google is the largest company in Mountain View, it is not the largest taxpayer (Cagle,2015). This is mainly because the sales revenue of Google’s enterprise services is not covered by the current sales tax, and the city of Mountain View can not collect the largest tax revenue from Google. As such, unlike the successful construction of Apple Park in the city of Cupertino, the expansion of Google does not show a promising return of profit because Google is a company that focuses on public services and not sellable products. While Apple remits large amounts of tax on every single product the company sells, Google does not collect any forms of taxes on the advertisements that we click on nor the personal information that we share across the internet; thus, the city government does not collect any of Google’s revenue. In addition, nearly all of Google’s headquarters provide employees with self-sufficient restaurants, shuttles, laundry, car repairs, entertainment, haircuts, and other comprehensive services (Cagle, 2015). By planning a mall-like working environment for Google’s new expansion, the designers ultimately fulfill the necessities of Google’s employees, but the surrounding businesses in Mountain View do not benefit from Google employees and their high salaries.
As Google moves into Mountain View, housing tensions also represent one of the major problems in the state of California for the past ten years. Silicon Valley technology companies have created a large number of multi-millionaires, and the annual income of engineers is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, far exceeding that of non-tech industry residents. The surge in income has driven up housing prices in Silicon Valley. In the past few years, housing and rent prices in the Silicon Valley have risen by at least 40%, and Mountain View has been the hardest hit area (“Google Headquarters — Mountain View”); the increase in living-cost caused by higher salaries offered by Google, ultimately inflates the market, negatively affecting local residents’ living standards; thus, prices of common goods and needs become unaffordable to households in Silicon Valley cities. As a result, many local residents are forced to move to other cities where the cost of living is cheaper, contributing to a net loss of local residency and city revenue. Mountain View wants to be a diversified local economy and not just dependent on Google revenue.
What has Google done to subdue these issues? In response to the increasing living costs and a congested highway, Google offered more community benefit packages to the city of Mountain View; for example, Google aims to use its amassed wealth to benefit the local community. The company has lobbied for an extra carpool lane on Highway 101 to accommodate its daily stream of employee shuttles, in addition to bike lanes, and bankrolled a free local public bus near Google’s headquarters (Robuck, 2019). Even with the hope of alleviating some of its impact on the local community, the traffic hardly shows any improvements at all, even after Google’s funding (Cagle, 2015). Here, the funding of Google’s numerous, excessive civic projects and community benefits are controlled by the company itself, and the city governments have no freedom to interfere with the distribution of resources. In Google’s opinion, they have provided Mountain View with a lot in return: in addition to the substantial annual property taxes, Google has also provided Mountain View with free Wi-Fi and donated millions of dollars to local schools and equipment, which represents an essential donation of community benefits (Bloomberg, 2018). But, Mountain View residents are more worried that their city will become a vassal of Google and gradually evolve into a “Google City’’ where these benefits are not necessarily favoring their needs. When evaluating the effectiveness of the city government, local residents often fail to draw a transparent and consistent distinction between a business and a government. As such, the community benefit packages offered by Google fail to directly help the government to solve the city’s issues and only benefit Google’s interests in the city of Mountain View.
When navigating potential solutions that may resolve the conflicts between small cities and big scale companies, it is always useful to examine similar scenarios from foreign companies in other nations. In order to change the status quo, I propose the solution of changing the current taxing system of the city government to limit big company decisions and investments, and there should be additional tax measures to spark cooperation between big companies and city governments. Instead of charging only the land tax and sales tax, the government should include a form of “urban maintenance” tax that allows the city to distribute the resources to where it is needed the most. This solution would allow more cities to obtain stable authority and encourage the government to freely distribute the resources rather than becoming a subjugate of a company’s image. In addition, the city government can take more control and earn more profits. For example, the Dubai government established the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing in 1997, and these two individual organizations represent a third-party facilitator that is dedicated to allowing companies to acknowledge the city’s long-term developments, including improvements in infrastructure, public facilities, and transportation (Andargeh, 2016). In response, the companies in Dubai can successfully collaborate and mutually benefit from the city government by utilizing taxing techniques that are similar to the “urban maintenance” tax method that I have proposed.
Additionally, Gizachew Andargeh, the manager for the Office of the Deputy Mayor, states that “cities and businesses can work collaboratively to solve civic issues — such as engaging in consumerism and basic demands of local residents” (Andargeh, 2016). Here, Andargeh’s perspective can be efficiently applied to the city of Mountain View. By limiting the construction of restaurants and entertainment facilities inside Google’s headquarters, the city government could generate more business opportunities for the local residents and earn back the profits that belong to the city. These measures of local residents’ basic demands have created prime conditions for business and fostered a thriving business community for both Google and the city. Currently, Google has promised additional housing but is actually mainly targeted at local residents who work for Google (Bloomberg, 2018). Not only does Google’s decision to build more houses hurt the city’s economy, but it also forces more local residents to leave the city because of increased pricing due to Google’s “benefit packages.” Again, Andargeh’s perspective of increasing more consumers’ basic demands can be applied to the problem of housing in the case of Mountain View: we should grant houses to service personnel, allowing more residents to provide more public services for the city.
In conclusion, the relationship between a huge global corporation and a tiny city is a strange relationship. In some ways, it is mutually beneficial, but other times it shows inequity and indecisiveness. Tech companies are not colonizing cities against their will. Cities need tech funding, and tech industries need city support. Especially as more companies buy more real estate in Silicon Valley, more growth is planned. The result is a redefinition of the partnership between local government and the private sector, where selective community benefits may become an important driver of city policy. Without setting additional milestones for tax collection and distribution, companies can afford to drive future construction projects and public policy in their favor, superseding the role of local government and advancing the company’s own ideology; in other words, by accepting the community benefits offered by large scale companies in exchange of their further expansions, these small city governments will become dependent on the companies both economically and environmentally and ultimately lose its role of benefiting the public. Indeed, tackling the inequality between business and city government proves to be a crucial step towards establishing a mutually beneficial relationship. By modifying the current taxing system to the “urban maintenance” taxing method and opening up more job opportunities to the city’s local residents, we can slowly find the balance.
Works Cited
Andargeh, Gizachew. “GCBA Cities Business Growth — PWC.” How Cities and Business Can Work Together for Growth, June, 2016, https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/psrc/pdf/gcba-cities-business-growth.pdf.
Bloomberg. “Google Drops $1 Billion on Real Estate Near Its Headquarters.” National Real Estate Investor, Penton Media, Inc., Penton Business Media, Inc. and their subsidiaries, 10 Feb. 2018, https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/273cgt/cdi_proquest_reports_2138512616
Bunn, Daniel. “Sources of Government Revenue in the United States.” Tax Foundation, Tax Foundation, 14 Feb. 2022, https://taxfoundation.org/publications/sources-government-revenue-united-states/.
Cagle, Susie. “Why One Silicon Valley City Said “no” to Google: Big Money and Even Bigger Egos are Colliding in the Tech World’s New Company Towns.” Forefront, May 11, 2015. ProQuest, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazines/why-one-silicon-valley-city-said-no-google/docview/1679880192/se-2?accountid=14749
“Google Headquarters- Mountain View.” Architectural Record, vol. 194, no. 6, McGraw Hill Publications Company, 2006, p. 178–.
Heatherwick, Thomas. “Heatherwick Studio: Design & Architecture: Google Bay View.” Heatherwick Studio Design & Amp; Architecture, 6 Apr. 2012, https://www.heatherwick.com/project/google-bay-view/.
Robuck, Mike. “Google Expands Second Headquarter Plans in San Jose.” FierceInstaller, Questex, LLC, 2019, https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/273cgt/cdi_proquest_reports_2305991820
Tripomatic, Sygic. “Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California, United States.” In Mountain View, California, United States | Sygic Travel, Jul. 2022, https://travel.sygic.com/en/poi/google-headquarters-poi:35852.
