Google Rents From NASA

Google has signed a 40-year lease on land owned by NASA and will build a new campus there to hold the thousand of workers it expects to take on over the next few years.

Google has a new home, or at least it will soon. The search giant has signed a lease on a section of the land owned by NASA at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. That land doesn’t come cheap, either – Google will be forking out $3.66 million a year.

The hi-tech campus they plan to build there will cover 1.2 million square feet and include and office complex as well as R&D facilities.

It makes sense – over the last four years Google’s payroll has expanded by 17,000 workers, to a total of 19,156, meaning it’s been scrambling for space around its Silicon Valley Googleplex HQ, which it bought for $139 million just two years ago and boasts a million square feet of space.

Nasa will use the rent money for research and to improve the Center.

David Radcliffe, Google’s vice-president of real estate and workplace services, told the BBC:

"We believe this collaboration between Google, Nasa and the city of Mountain View is emblematic of the mutually beneficial partnerships that can be created between the public and private sectors."

It’s anticipated that building work will begin by 2013 at the latest, and that there’s a possibility of a 50-year lease extension.