--- Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Is Google buying 'GoGooroa Island'??

Permalink: 3/02/2005 02:06:00 AM | << Back Home

I just stumbled across this... and I'm not sure if I believe it or not. On one hand, this is a really cool idea... an island shaped like a 'G' could be Google's little fortress... and it even has the domain name extension '.go', haha. But honestly, it's not like Google to spend money like that... and I quote:

-- Google can afford a lot of things these days. And so can its employees, many of whom had stock options. About 1,000 of them became millionaires when the stock went public, and Brin and Page, who are 31 and 32 years old respectively, are worth about $6 billion each.

But they're doing everything they can to keep the money from becoming a distraction. Brin treated the day that the company went public as just another workday. "Everybody was focused on their projects," he says. "One of the engineers I talked to, and I asked him what his plans were and he said he was gonna throw out all of his socks and buy new ones so they would all match - they'd all be the same kind. So that was the kind of extravagance we're seeing here.

Brin says he splurged on a new T-shirt. And he still drives a little Japanese car.

"If anybody got a Porsche or a Ferrari right now at Google, they'd probably be drummed out of the company," observes John Battelle, an author and entrepreneur who has been following Silicon Valley companies for 20 years. -- from 'Defining Google'.

According to the site, Google is planning to rename the island to GoogLand, but as interesting as this seems it seems like complete BS. Like, I want to believe it, but c'mon.... the part about the datacenters being submerged in a lagoon... only accessable with scuba gear? Cool idea but seriously... lol.

Anyone know if this is a hoax or not? I think that if it was for real it would have gotten more press than this, but who knows....