Facebook is reportedly looking to more than double the size of its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. The social networking giant may move and lease as much as 11,150 square meters (120,018 square feet) of office space in the Irish capital over five years. Facebook’s Dublin office currently occupies about 5,000 square meters (53,820 square feet).
Menlo Park is considering the former Bank of Ireland headquarters building and two office blocks in south docklands close to its existing location, according to three people with knowledge of the matter cited by Bloomberg. The deadline for building owners to pitch proposals for the new space was January 13, 2012, but it’s still not known whether Facebook took the plunge or not.
Facebook has 800 million active users, but its headquarters in the US is not responsible for the majority of them. Facebook set up its international headquarters in 2008, due to the tax incentives: approximately 2 percent tax in Ireland instead of 35 percent tax in the US.
Ever since, all users outside of the US and Canada have been subject to Irish and European data protection laws. This is why the Irish privacy audit last year, which Facebook managed to pass with flying colors, was such a big deal.
The social networking giant, which has over 3,000 employees, has been moving and expanding quite a bit in 2011, and the trend is going to continue into 2012. As you can see in the links below, the expansion is far from over: Facebook has big plans for growth and the company knows it has to be mindful of where it’s going to house all of its busy bees.
Since this is still a rumor, Facebook declined to comment on this article.
See also:
- Facebook completes move from Palo Alto to Menlo Park
- Facebook’s new headquarters is located at 1 Hacker Way
- Facebook announces open engineering office in New York City
- Facebook denies rumor of data center in Taiwan
- Facebook building server farm just south of Arctic Circle
- Facebook to move Seattle office next year, hire more engineers
