Google Confirms Plan to Conquer Outer Space

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Randall <rvh40 () insightbb com>
Date: October 18, 2005 10:00:45 PM EDT
To: JMG <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Cc: Dave <dave () farber net>
Subject: Google Confirms Plan to Conquer Outer Space


http://tinyurl.com/ccaeu

Google confirms Ames plan
Search engine plans offices, partnership with space agency
Verne Kopytoff and Dan Levy, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Google Inc. confirmed Wednesday that it will build up to 1 million
square feet of offices at NASA Ames Research Center and collaborate with
the space agency on research surrounding topics such as supercomputing
that could benefit everything from moon launches to online searches.

The partnership is intended to blend the expertise and huge resources of
one of the leading Internet companies with an army of scientists focused
on the stratosphere and beyond.

"Google and NASA share a common desire to bring the universe of
information to people around the world," said Eric Schmidt, the
company's chief executive officer, in a statement. "Imagine having a
wide selection of images from the Apollo space mission at your
fingertips whenever you want it."

The partnership, announced late Wednesday at a press conference at the
NASA facility, will bring a marquee tenant to the Ames Research Center,
located at Moffett Field, a former military airfield near Mountain View
that has been struggling to find a new purpose since the military pulled
out in the 1990s.

For Google, the new partnership comes at a time when the Internet search
engine is expanding by leaps and bounds, hiring on average 10 people per
day. Experts say the company, which now employs more than 4,000 people,
has ambitions beyond Internet search and could pose a serious threat to
Microsoft Corp. for supremacy in desktop consumer computing.

This collaboration with NASA could also portend a new intellectual
center for Silicon Valley, one that has been sorely missed since the
heyday of Palo Alto's Xerox PARC, a seminal research facility that
helped foster much of today's technology.

The details of the real estate part of the deal were vague. Schmidt said
that the planning is still in the early stages and that the building on
vacant land would take place over the course of many years.

In addition to supercomputing, the research and development between
Google and NASA will involve biotechnology, information technology and
nanotechnology, the development of extremely small devices.

Google stands to gain from learning about NASA's supercomputers, which
could come in handy as the Mountain View search engine compiles even
bigger indexes of information and video. NASA leaders cited the benefits
of getting access to Google's search expertise to pick out nuggets of
information from the volumes of data streaming back from satellites and
human space launches.

"NASA is nothing but drowned in information when we come back from our
missions," said Scott Pace, associate administrator for NASA.

Google's headquarters will remain nearby in Mountain View.

Some academics have expressed hope that the collaboration will foster
innovation across the Bay Area. The partners said that while some of the
research will be public, some may be kept private, in keeping with
Google's reputation for secrecy.

Part of the mission behind the collaboration is to bring more private
enterprise into the space field.

NASA officials were enthusiastic about the Google alliance, announced at
a press event late Wednesday afternoon at the NASA Ames Center.

"Our planned partnership presents an enormous range of potential
benefits to the space program," said NASA Ames Center Director Scott
Hubbard. At 1 million square feet, the new campus would be larger than
filmmaker George Lucas' new Presidio complex and nearly as big as the
52-story office tower in the Bank of America Center in San Francisco's
Financial District.

The agreement would allow the company to design and develop a campus for
whatever needs it envisions.

Google has been hoping to expand for at least a year, combing the Bay
Area for suitable sites, including downtown San Francisco and San Jose.

NASA Ames, off Highway 101 in Mountain View next to the former Moffett
Field naval air base, has been a center for space research since 1939.
The Navy decommissioned Moffett in 1994 and turned it over to NASA,
which spent most of the next decade trying to figure out the future of
the 2,000-acre property.

By 2002, NASA Ames had carved out a 213-acre portion of the base as a
research center for nanotechnology, supercomputing, astrobiology and
satellite design, attracting engineers and technicians with advanced
degrees and training.

The research park has development approvals for more than 4 million
square feet of new space. Space agency officials have signed up
universities to run satellite campuses and research facilities at the
park, including Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, San Jose State and the
University of California.

Not everyone was thrilled with the news. NASA recently announced
hundreds of scientists would be asked to take a buyout and leave their
jobs. Others wondered why Google will be building in Silicon Valley,
which is full of empty office space.

In Google's neck of the woods, the office vacancy rate is 15 percent,
while the R&D vacancy rate is 21 percent, according to the Cornish &
Carey brokerage in Palo Alto. However, despite the glut of space,
brokers say it's not easy to find a huge complex of quality buildings.

"I don't know where else you'd get that size," one commercial broker
said of the NASA Ames project. "I'm sure your company doesn't want to
split up its groups into 10 different locations if they can help it."

Chronicle staff writer Dan Levy contributed to this report.

-- "We've got the hatemongers who literally hate this president, and  
that
is so wrong. . . . The people who hate George Bush hate him because he's
a follower of Jesus Christ, unashamedly says so and applies his faith in
his day-to-day operations." -- Rev. Jerry Falwell, on C-SPAN's  
"Washington Journal"





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