Title: Google Headquarters Visit in Mountain View, California
Preparation: Googleplex address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 The address of the buildings cross the street, opposite to the Googleplex, 1625 Charleston Rd, Mountain View, CA 94043 The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc. The mountain view headquaters campus has dozens buildings.
Attractions and activities: Visiting google campus is often in the todo list of people who visit the Bay Area or the newcomers of the Bay Area, especially of almost all the software engineers. Since Google was born in 1998, the amazing growth and expansion to the number one tech giant in a few years in the whole world is really a miracle, to some extent, from most of the people's view. The story behind Google's growth has the irresistible power to draw tourists to visit the headquarters. 1. Googleplex building and the surrounding area. 2. Android Lawn Statue: Located in 1981 Landings Drive, Mountain View, CA 94043. One thing you will see the Android Lawn Statue and many sweets such as Oreo cookie, Marshmallow, Cupcake, Jelly Bean icons, etc. Because each of these icons' names represents a release version name of the Android Operating System. 3. There are a gift store and a visitor center in 1981 Landings Drive area. When we visited on Sunday, they were closed. In my friend's word, Google has been always a sacred place where every software engineer wants to work for. Years ago, there were also surveys showing the most software engineers want to work for Google, Apple. The campus, the buildings themselves just like the other company's buildings. The most fascinating part is the power of google's miraculous growth, people use Google dozens of or hundreds of times every day.
Commute: Following GPS should be good enough to get there. We visited there twice. During the weekend, it's not a problem to find a parking slot. Sometimes, there are buildings or roads under constructions that may block some parking areas. Google campus is quite big and several dozens of buildings there.
Things I wish I had known before: Recently I have read a fantastic book that described how Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Standford University's Campus, how Google grows from a research project, how it has once blown up the internet network of Stanford because of the heavy search queries, how it grows to IPO, etc. The book named: Trailblazers in science and technology "Larry Page and Sergey Brin", Information at your fingertips. It's a really great book to read.
