Found: geeks on the beach.
Google Inc. has spread out like a beach towel in Santa Monica. What started in 2003 with a few dozen employees has grown into the company's fourth-largest office and fourth-largest engineering center in the U.S., with 300-plus employees in three buildings.
"We have the best weather of any office in Google," said Thomas Williams, the engineering director who heads the office. "It's pretty easy to hire engineers from Toronto, New York, Cambridge, the best schools, all over the world."
Like Google's other far-flung outposts, the campus has developed a distinct personality that reflects its surroundings. There's the "Three's Company" theme: Printers and bathrooms are named after characters on the ABC sitcom, which was set near the Santa Monica beach; the library has a signed John Ritter script as well as original bubble gum trading cards from the show; and employees dine in the Regal Beagle Cafe.
Homage is paid to the Santa Monica Pier with the Hot Dog on a Stick kitchen and an arcade stocked with a ring toss, Tip-a-Troll, Skee-Ball and a fun-house mirror. Other traditions include Tuesday volleyball games and Thursday beach walks, ideal for working off the free ice cream.
And the Santa Monica office was the launch pad for what has become a feature in the lobby of every Google office around the world: a running digital scroll of what people are searching for on the Web. A "potty mouth" program screens out anything that might offend.
Many of the perks are much the same as those at Google's Mountain View headquarters in Silicon Valley. Engineers chow on free food (on a rooftop deck, weather permitting) and pursue pet projects. Every Tuesday afternoon, tea with sandwiches and cakes is served. Every other Thursday afternoon, there is a gathering called "Thank God It's Almost Friday." And there are chair and table massages, video games and technical brain teasers posted in the restrooms.
Southern California has been key to the evolution of Google as the favorite search destination of the Web-surfing world. In 2003, Google spent $102 million for Santa Monica-based online ad start-up Applied Semantics Inc., which helped launch AdSense, a program through which advertisers bid on specific keywords. The following year, Google bought Pasadena-based Picasa Inc., which makes photo management software.
