Some grumble that Google isn't model citizen

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Bracing for an invasion of Google employees in February after the Internet search giant bought up its office complex, startup Become.com erected a makeshift sign: "I for one welcome our Google overlords."

The one-liner, lifted from an episode of "The Simpsons," captured the ambivalence felt by Mountain View inhabitants over how rapidly Google is taking over their Silicon Valley community of 73,000. The same company that blankets the city with free wireless Internet access and funds Mountain View's high-tech bookmobile also clogs the streets with traffic and bothers residents by flying corporate jets overhead.

Never has a Silicon Valley company risen so fast. Only nine years after its inception and three years after going public, Google is the third-most-valuable tech company behind Microsoft and Cisco Systems, thanks to its search engine and other Web services that generate an average of $43 million in revenue each day.

Since 2004, Google has quintupled its global work force to nearly 14,000. The modern headquarters here, dubbed the Googleplex, is filled with pets, colorful exercise balls and nearly every service imaginable.

To many in Mountain View, Google has become a primary source of economic aid, curiosity, inspiration and pride.

After four years of city budget cuts and hiring freezes, Google has helped fuel an economic renaissance. Two years ago, Google ranked 21st in Santa Clara County for assessed business property — computers, fax machines and other taxable business equipment. Today, it's fourth behind only Cisco, Intel and Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

The Internet giant restored corporate leadership after the dot-com bust, attracting smaller companies that want to be close to greatness. Its constant quest for cubicle space has helped shrink the commercial vacancy rate from nearly 30 percent to 10 percent.

Google bought more property in the county last year than anyone but three commercial real-estate companies. It's in talks with the city to build a hotel and conference center on the Google side of town, which would help Mountain View realize a long-held dream.

"Google is what pulled us through," said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a regional planning group.

Tourist attraction

The company also has injected Mountain View, which sits almost 40 miles southeast of San Francisco, with the kind of energy usually associated with a liberal-arts college. Googlers, as they're known, toss Frisbees, glide around campus on bicycles sporting orange safety flags and pedal together on company-provided seven-seaters while discussing software code. Tourists snap pictures in front of the Googleplex.

Locals enjoy pranking Google. Public-relations firm Eastwick Communications stages team-building contests that challenge employees to sneak into Google's free cafeteria. Bernadette Albrecht, a human-resources consultant at Eastwick, won a $50 gift certificate by asking a biking Googler to give her his orange flag.

"He hesitated, but he said they replace them all the time," Albrecht said.

But Mountain View and Google are grappling with town-and-gown issues. Some influential Mountain View residents grumble that Google hasn't been a model corporate citizen: It has escalated the pain of rush hour, displaced small companies to make room for its own troops and raised a ruckus by striking an unusual deal for Google's billionaire co-founders to land their private planes at nearby Moffett Federal Airfield.

Some residents worry about how disconnected Google seems from the community. The company occupies a private oasis on the other side of Highway 101 from downtown. The city has installed more traffic lights and is considering adding more sidewalks and bicycle lanes on highway overpasses to accommodate Googlers who might want to head downtown.

But Google's stock-option millionaires don't have much reason to patronize local stores and restaurants. To keep employees working hard, the company pampers them with gourmet meals, haircuts, dentist and doctor visits, massage therapy, car washes and oil changes — all at the Googleplex. Google also gives frees rides to and from work every day aboard 32 shuttle buses that run on biodiesel.

In many ways, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have built the Independent Republic of Google within Mountain View's borders, annexing more of the city as its advertising revenue pays for corporate expansion. Some fear Google is beginning to dominate the small city the way it dominates the Internet.

"You don't really know what's going on in there," said Kevin Cuneo, who grew up in nearby Redwood City and now works at Eastwick. "It's a huge growing mass. No one knows when it's going to end."

Google says it takes seriously its responsibility to be a good neighbor. The company gave the city a $200,000 bookmobile that's environmentally friendly and features laptops that fold down from outside the vehicle. It operates a free citywide wireless network. And it provides grants to local nonprofits, lets local police train on campus and maintains a nature trail.

Some local businesses have seen a direct benefit from its expansion. Brothers Neil and Kurt Jehning are so busy changing office-door locks that they have spent the past year trying to recruit more locksmiths.

"We've been a part of the Mountain View community for a while now, and many of our own employees call this city home," said David Radcliffe, Google's vice president of real estate and workplace services. "We engage with the community in a whole host of different, innovative ways and are always looking for even better ways to integrate ourselves into our neighborhood."

Dorm room to town

Page and Brin created the Web-searching technology behind Google while computer-science graduate students at Stanford University. In 1998 they moved the fledgling company from Page's dorm room to a friend's Menlo Park garage, then to a Palo Alto office. After outgrowing several spaces, Google moved to Mountain View in 2003.

Although Google, which is valued at $199 billion, won't disclose how many of its employees work in its headquarters, the company says about 1,500 employees make their home here and contribute to the local economy. There is a downside, some say: Googlers compete with each other to buy property, pricing some middle-class buyers out of the market.

Troubling to residents

Most troubling to some residents and community activists in Mountain View and nearby Sunnyvale was their discovery in September that Page and Brin had crafted an unusual arrangement to turn Moffett Federal Airfield into their personal runway.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center, which owns the former Naval Air Station Moffett Field, and Google say the arrangement is part of a partnership to fund scientific research that benefits taxpayers.

Google pays NASA at least $1.3 million a year to help defray the cost of maintaining the airfield. It also has placed instruments on the founders' Boeing 767 wide-body and two Gulfstream Vs to collect scientific data during flights.

Google also is in serious negotiations to build a huge campus on the air base.

"Google is a wonderful company whose founders have a genuine and deep interest in science, engineering and technology," said Steven Zornetzer, associate director for institutions and research at the Ames center. "Those interests are very synergistic with what we are doing."

Critics contend the Moffett field landing rights smack of special privilege and treatment.

"Show us it's really there for scientific research and not a favor for someone who has a lot of money," said Lenny Siegel, a Mountain View resident who is the executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight. "We want them to play by the rules."

Google insists that it does. The backlash surprised the company that says it lives by a well-meaning corporate code: "Don't be evil."

Page and Brin consider themselves a force for good in the world, with a billion-dollar foundation and corporate initiatives including grants for lunar explorers and small nonprofits.

Mountain View's Sempervirens Fund, one of the country's oldest conservation organizations, has seen its Web site traffic double, thanks to $5,000 worth of free search-engine advertising Google provided.

"We see it as a blessing," membership director Melanie Kimbel said.

But some residents say Google should do more for its hometown, such as hosting more community events and taking a more visible role in sponsoring local organizations.

"They're there, but I don't see them," said Rosiland Bivings, a longtime community activist who sits on the Mountain View Library Foundation.

Perhaps that's because Google is so young compared with Hewlett-Packard, Applied Materials and other Silicon Valley elders that frequently spring for charitable events or run nonprofits that tackle local issues.

"It takes time to catch up," said David Ginsborg , deputy to Santa Clara County's assessor.