Google tops 6,300 employees in Seattle area, will invest $7B in new U.S. offices this year

Google’s new Seattle campus in Kirkland Urban. (Google photo from December 2020)

The pandemic may have sent large sections of the Google workforce home. However, the search giant continues to expand its physical footprint, announcing Thursday that it plans to invest $ 7 billion in offices and data centers in 19 states this year. This year, 10,000 full-time positions are to be created in the USA.

In a blog post titled “Investing in America” in 2021, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, wrote, “Coming together in person to collaborate and build a community is central and becoming an important part of Google’s culture our future. ” In 2019, Google’s Pichai wrote a similar blog post announcing $ 13 billion in office and data center investments in 14 states.

Google allows employees to work remotely until September and is testing the idea of ​​a “flexible working week”. A July survey of Google employees found that most would want to return to the office for at least a few days. The company employs more than 135,000 people worldwide.

Google operates an extensive engineering center in multiple locations in the Seattle area, including an expanding campus in Kirkland and a new complex in the South Lake Union neighborhood in the shadow of Amazon’s headquarters. The Seattle area will be part of the company’s growth plans, and the company has also announced that it will open its new office location in Portland, Oregon this year.

Just before the pandemic, when Google opened its South Lake Union building, the company employed more than 4,500 people in the Seattle area. At the time, Seattle was the company’s second largest engineering outpost outside of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The company currently employs 6,300 people in Washington state and made $ 17.2 billion in economic impact for companies in the state last year.

A rendering of the Kirkland Urban Campus by Google. (Google photo)

Google was the trendsetter in setting up tech outposts in the Seattle area and first started operations in Kirkland in 2004. There are now more than 100 engineering centers in the Seattle area operated by technology giants like Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Salesforce.

Washington governor Jay Inslee said Google’s expansion into his state was “welcome news”.

“We look forward to working with you Google on these new investments to support our construction workers and long-term job opportunities in computing and technology, ”he said in a statement.

Google is currently building its new Kirkland Urban campus east of Seattle. An agreement was also signed last year to purchase nearly 10 acres from a car dealership in Kirkland.

Construction is also underway on Block 38 at 520 Westlake, one of five buildings that make up Google’s 900,000-square-foot campus in South Lake Union near Amazon’s headquarters.