Traffic Invited to Google & YouTube Headquarters in New York City
This April I was given the opportunity of a lifetime, to get behind the doors of arguably the most influential company in the world, Google. Taking a tour of Google headquarters in NYC proved to be an educational and memorable experience. Suffering from a little Jetlag we set off on our tour of Google Inc, a company that prides itself on innovation and is famed for its unique and inspiring working environment. They have an internal mantra “not to be evil” which is a slight relief given the amount of information the company has on the search history, emails and location of every single one of us.
Having designed both Traffic agency offices myself I appreciate the need for a creative workspace, there are many cool and creative environments now on offer like WeWork, but the Google NYC headquarters felt a little over the top. I was a little surprised at the lack of atmosphere, it felt quieter than the massive surge of creative energy I expected to see swirling around the various offices and studios. We found the odd group of people having a chat, but they didn’t seem to be doing much!
Located on 8th street the building itself is physically huge, Google bought it for 4 billion when it used to house the New York Port Authority. I found it interesting that this building in its early days managed all traffic and trade in and out of the seaport, and now it manages billions of dollars of web traffic worldwide.
One of the first things that we learned about working at Google is that they encourage creative thinking and innovative thought. Each working area that we walked through had a variety of both large and small elements to foster inspiration. I was quite surprised to see how few people were wondering around. The place looked empty. Perhaps they were all working behind the scenes in rows of desks managing my search results, or maybe it’s just algorithms doing the work now! It was also odd to see vast rooms with hundreds of desks with only 2 or 3 people working in there, giving the false impression of a business that was going broke, maybe they were at the cafe ordering more Google food.
The layout was flexible with sliding opaque glass walls that can be configured in different ways so that teams can work together and individually. It made me wonder if I had the same layout in traffic if it would affect productivity in our business. The staff would certainly be incredibly happy with free food and drinks in kitchens and cafes around every corner.
The view from the Google roof terrace
Just like every other company, Google has computers that need fixing. To solve this they set up an IT “bar” that is always staffed and all you have to do is just bring your machine by to get it serviced. Their office supply system was of course impressive too with pods located throughout the building with basic office supplies. You just grab what you need.
No photos were allowed to be taken during our tour but I managed to take a few sneaky snaps before being told off – I felt like a student at high school in trouble again. At Google x where they develop “space shots,” they actually take your phone off you so you cannot take photos of the products In development or the screens. It’s top secret stuff!
Google’s various offices and campuses around the globe reflect the company’s overarching philosophy, which is nothing less than “to create the happiest, most productive workplace in the world…”. In order to facilitate this they provide a series of play zones for their employees.
Here is the Lego Zone. Having a hard day? Just come by and blow off some steam and build a Star Wars Millennium Falcon or even a Batmobile. That is pretty cool.
Dining options included a food truck court, a healthy food area and a larger cafeteria space on the ground floor where we had our Google breakfast complete with Toby’s estate coffee. All of it complimentary, of course – they probably provide food free to suppliers for great search rankings!
It was a great to see behind the veil of the world’s biggest search engine, who have so much control businesses are forced to pay protection money to protect their brands or business viability. I wish I had come up with it. My god didn’t yahoo and Ask Jeeves which they’d monetised their search results way back when.
After Google we found the main entrance to YouTube, I was expecting a grand glass entrance, but it was just this lift tucked away in the shopping centre across the road from Google.
The new YouTube Space is located in Chelsea, Manhattan, in the meatpacking district. That’s where they invite YouTube creators and advertisers to attend events and workshops. In addition, they provide production equipment and recording equipment. We passed through many studios and sets which looked suitable for not just home videos but movie making.
The YouTube Space of New York is more than 1800 square meters and is located on the sixth floor of Chelsea Market, where the first factory that invented Oreo cookies was located.
For the YouTube again it is very important that their collaborators and employees are creative people and for this they have created a work environment that is conducive to learning and creating. New York’s ‘Youtubers’ are also welcomed to the space where they can attend free workshops to improve their video edits and interact with more clips creators. The only condition to attend the classes is to have a YouTube channel and the courses are completely free.
Once we had completed the tour, inspired, we began concepts for Traffic’s next social media campaign. Gaining access to world class inspiration will definitely help us to deliver the best digital campaigns in the business.
Thanks you to everyone that made us feel welcome at Google.
Story By Andrew Begg CEO Traffic Australia
Facts about Google