Google to double campus neighboring Microsoft's Redmond HQ
Google is to construct a new site to double the number of workers its Kirkland campus in Seattle, Washington can hold.
The engineering-focused offices opened in 2004 and house the teams responsible for building Google+ and the Chrome browser. Google also counts the site as the birthplace of Google Talk, Google Storage and Google+ Hangouts.
"We are excited to expand our presence in Kirkland, where we have one of the largest engineering offices outside of our headquarters in Mountain View," the company said in a statement to ZDNet's sister site CNET.
The Kirkland office is one of two Google engineering sites in Seattle that lie on opposite sides of Lake Washington. The facility is the third largest centre for engineers behind Google's New York office and its Mountain View headquarters, according to The Seattle Times.
Including a third office in Bothell, Seattle, Google currently has around 1,000 employees in the area. The new two-building construction at Kirkland is expected to offer 16,000 square metres (180,000 square feet) of office space — enough for the 1,000 employees Google expects to add at the facility — and is a five-minute drive from Microsoft's own Redmond headquarters, the paper said.
Construction on the new site will be completed in 2015 and is expected to achieve LEED certification for energy efficiency.