Hollywood may have its star home tours but here in the Silicon Valley we have
the tech pilgrimage. Every day hundreds of tourists come through Apple, Google,
and Facebook to get their pictures taken in front of the corporate headquarters
sign and to shop at the corporate store. This began in the early 2000s when CEOs
like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg became celebrities and it's now
snowballed into a giant tech tourism. Today we're going to do our own tech tour.
Behind me here is the original Apple headquarters and arguably where I
believe tech tourism first began. I actually worked for Apple from 2000 to
2007 and I remember that shortly after the launch of iPod and iTunes Apple
became this icon of pop culture celebrity. Soon after that we started
seeing people show up in front of IL1 here which is the main reception area
and also where the executive offices are of first Steve and now Tim Cook and they were
just taking pictures and going to the corporate store to shop and it's
snowballed in the next couple of years to the point where we started seeing a ton
of buses just busing loads of tourists in to do exactly that.
Apple is famous for its secrecy so most of the buildings are on lockdown.
Tech tourists are restricted to taking pictures from the outside and shopping
in the corporate store. If you know an Apple employee have them meet you here
so you can get their 10% discount on anything in the store. This is a mini
version of the regular Apple retail locations but there are tons of unique
souvenir items in addition to the typical fare you'll find in your hometown.
This campus is on a street called Infinite Loop which is a nod to the
programming concept of the infinite loop or a sequence of instructions that loop
endlessly without a terminating condition. The street is a giant crescent
that loops back on itself. There are six buildings surrounding a central
courtyard with an employee cafeteria. On Fridays the courtyard is filled with
employees, food, and kegs for the weekly company beer bash. Occasionally an
outdoor stage is set for the latest concert the Apple music team has lined
up. In the last few months they've had Demi Lovato and Stevie Wonder play here.
In the mid-2000s Apple outgrew Infinite Loop and began gobbling up real estate
all over Cupertino. But this really dispersed employees and so Apple decided
to consolidate and build a much bigger facility down the street.
This is Apple's new campus which is down the street
from their old headquarters in Cupertino.
This actually used to be the old headquarters for HP in Cupertino which I also worked
at so for me it's just really interesting to see the whole
transformation of this campus here.
The building is a gigantic circular shape and dubbed the spaceship by locals.
The curved panes of glass make it a technically difficult structure to
execute. Personally I think this is the best expression of the original
infinite loop concept. This new location will have a separate visitor center
across the street and feature a corporate store and cafe so tourists can enjoy in
peace and not get in the way of busy employees.
Up north of Cupertino is the Googleplex in Mountain View.
It's a sprawling campus made up of a variety of
different existing office structures totaling about 3.1 million square feet
of office space. Google is probably the most friendly to tech tourism with
greeters and lots to see.
This is the main campus of the Googleplex. These
buildings used to be SGI or Silicon Graphics a now-defunct hardware company
that used to sell hardware to enterprises.
You'll best know this campus from the movie "The Internship" starring Vince
Vaughn and Owen Wilson with its nap pods, the open floor plans, the sand volleyball
court and of course the 19 fabulous gourmet free restaurants.
You're free to wander around the campus although the buildings are off-limits
unless you're accompanied by an employee. The main campus has plenty to see.
It's constantly bustling with visitors attending community activities like the
recent Technovation Competition, lots of quirky architectural and landscape
elements, and tons of sculptures and landmarks for great photo ops. If you
have the energy walk or drive the campus extension to appreciate just how large
and sprawling the company is. The larger Googleplex is in a continual state of
expansion and the new North Bayshore complex will include a visitor center.
In the meantime you can visit the temporary beta one that has a corporate store.
Let's go in and check it out!
Behind the store you can visit the giant Android statues that represent each of
the different Android operating software versions; cupcake, donut, eclair, froyo,
gingerbread, honeycomb, ice cream sandwich, jelly bean, lollipop, and marshmallow.
On the main campus is a t-rex statue named Stan that was purchased at a charity
auction in 2006.
Wander down to the GARField or Google Athletic and
Recreation Field where employees have use of soccer, tennis, and basketball
facilities. These are generously open to the public in the evenings and on the
weekends.And of course keep an eye out for the
colorful Google bikes that employees ride around between buildings.
Incidentally these get taken off campus all the time. I've seen them randomly at
the supermarket and parked in front of people's apartment complexes.
For the luxury experience there are also guided tech tours.
So I work for Incredible Adventures and we just started a
new tour this year doing Silicon Valley we
go to the Googleplex and we go to Facebook headquarters and a couple other
places and it's a new tour this year because tech tourism is becoming such a
big thing that we are having a lot of people calling in to our office asking
if we offer these kinds of tours. So we went ahead and tried to meet that
demand by adding this tour so it's a lot of fun and people seem to love to see
these places that they use on their phones every single day. Um, and now
they get to see where all of the magic happens so it's win-win for all of us.
Heading north we're gonna make our last stop at Facebook's HQ. It's located in
Menlo Park next to the Ravenswood Open preserve on what used to be the Sun
Microsystems campus. This is the least tourist friendly so expect to spend 15
minutes tops here. Let's take a loop around One Hacker Way.
From the outside it kind of looks like a random collection of mismatched buildings.
This is purposeful and the objective was to make it look like Disney Main Street.
Tourists can't access the phenomenal inner courtyard which is modeled after
downtown Palo Alto. The inside facing sections are all stores that employees
can use for free. There's a health center, a bank, a barber, a music studio, a video
arcade, graphic services, a woodworking shop, bike shop, and a dry cleaners.
There are also 9 free restaurants, a Philz coffee, and a gourmet sweet shop.
The pavement of the main plaza reads "Hack" from the sky.
Facebook also has its own set of employee bikes but they're Facebook blue and much newer.
Across Willow is their new building called MPK20 which stands for Menlo Park
Campus Building 20 that was designed by architect Frank Gehry. True to its
California inside/outside architecture the structure is light and airy and
combines elements of the nature around it including a rooftop park.
If you want to extend your Tech pilgrimage there's Oracle up in Redwood Shores with
its beautiful lagoons and tourist friendly cafe.
In the last few years Tesla has also made the list and its got a great showroom that you can browse
and if you are in the market for a car they'll even let you test drive one.
Always the best way to do these pilgrimages is if you know an employee
who can walk you around and take you to lunch in the cafeteria.
If you've done the tech pilgrimage before please
do share your favorite places and tips and
tricks in the comments below.
'Til next tim,e peace out Geeksters.
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