Google wants new campus in Silicon Valley with hardware R&D center

Google is said to be planning to build a new campus in Silicon Valley, where it wants to establish a center for the development of hardware products, among other things. This is reported by American news medium CNBC.

According to CNBC Google has been buying up land in northern San Jose, California, since early 2018. The company would have spent more than 389 million dollars on this, which translates to more than 330 million euros. CNBC reports that the plans have been submitted as an R&D facility. The accompanying documents show, among other things, a hardware operations center, in addition to a separate “tech campus” that would be open to the public.

One of the construction documents for Google’s upcoming campus. Image through CNBC

The new campus would be located between Google’s headquarters in Mountain View and the recently approved business location in San Jose. The planned campus would thus be named ‘Midpoint’ and comprise five office buildings, which will be connected by a pedestrian bridge above a road. CNBC claims this would be adjacent to three “industrial buildings,” which would house some of the business of Google’s hardware divisions, including those for Nest smart home products.

Google has not yet responded to CNBC’s message. It is already known that Google wants to focus more on the hardware market. In an interview with The Verge Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh stated that Google is “poised to take more market share in the hardware sector.” He did this in response to Google’s recently announced Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro smartphones. Those phones will use a self-designed Tensor soc, which combines components developed by Google itself with components that the tech giant purchases under license from other companies.

Pictures through CNBC