Prompt's TechBlog
Google's NASA relationship goes into interstellar overdrive
09 June 2008
Posted by Dave Wilby
Once your precocious start-up has become a multi-billion dollar global phenomenon, it takes a truly out-of-this world technology partnership to rocket business to a new level and bring the competition crashing back to earth.
If you haven't kept tabs on Google and NASA's mutual wooing over the past year, recent news is excuse enough for a quick refresher.
It all started out seemingly innocently enough last September when the media noticed NASA had let Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Bri share one of its company parking spots. A simple enough agreement you might think, until you read in the Herald Tribune that the parking spot in question was a much coveted federally-managed runway in NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffet Field, California (so very handy for Google HQ in Mountain View) and the company vehicle was a refurbished private wide-body Boeing 767-200...
At the time, Lenny Siegel, director of the Pacific Studies Center, a local non-profit group that has opposed proposed expansions of civilian flights at Moffett Field, had said: "If they are doing science missions, that's OK. If they are doing it just because they are rich and popular, it is not OK."
Anyway, a few months later a deal was inked between NASA and Google that enabled the search giant to access detailed 3D images of the Moon and Mars and use them in their web applications. The two organisations confirmed they would collaborate in a variety of areas including enriching Google Earth and launching Google Mars and Google Moon.
Finally to bring you completely up to date, Google last week signed a 40-year lease to build a 1.2 million square foot high-tech office campus on land owned by NASA, once again at the Ames Research Centre near Mountain View.
The BBC reports that over the last four years, Google has added more than 17,000 employees to boost its payroll to 19,156 workers and now needs the extra space for ever more ambitious expansion plans.
Building work is expected to get under way before 2013 with the final phase of work starting in 2022. After the 40-year lease expires, the agreement could be extended by as much as 50 more years.
The next stage of this friendship is anyone's guess.
Care to share your wildest dreams?
If you haven't kept tabs on Google and NASA's mutual wooing over the past year, recent news is excuse enough for a quick refresher.
It all started out seemingly innocently enough last September when the media noticed NASA had let Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Bri share one of its company parking spots. A simple enough agreement you might think, until you read in the Herald Tribune that the parking spot in question was a much coveted federally-managed runway in NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffet Field, California (so very handy for Google HQ in Mountain View) and the company vehicle was a refurbished private wide-body Boeing 767-200...
At the time, Lenny Siegel, director of the Pacific Studies Center, a local non-profit group that has opposed proposed expansions of civilian flights at Moffett Field, had said: "If they are doing science missions, that's OK. If they are doing it just because they are rich and popular, it is not OK."
Anyway, a few months later a deal was inked between NASA and Google that enabled the search giant to access detailed 3D images of the Moon and Mars and use them in their web applications. The two organisations confirmed they would collaborate in a variety of areas including enriching Google Earth and launching Google Mars and Google Moon.
Finally to bring you completely up to date, Google last week signed a 40-year lease to build a 1.2 million square foot high-tech office campus on land owned by NASA, once again at the Ames Research Centre near Mountain View.
The BBC reports that over the last four years, Google has added more than 17,000 employees to boost its payroll to 19,156 workers and now needs the extra space for ever more ambitious expansion plans.
Building work is expected to get under way before 2013 with the final phase of work starting in 2022. After the 40-year lease expires, the agreement could be extended by as much as 50 more years.
The next stage of this friendship is anyone's guess.
Care to share your wildest dreams?
Labels: google, NASA, partnerships, space, valet parking
