Seattle tragedy highlights Google’s role in tech construction boom

Seattle is a long way from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. So why is it expanding here?

The answer lies within the hectic construction scene around South Lake Union, where a crane collapsed on Saturday, killing two bystanders and two iron workers.

The new offices where the crane fell are being built for the company's Google Cloud operation.

The company plans to occupy around million square feet of office space in South Lake Union, according to Vulcan Real Estate, which is developing the property.

Greg DeMichillie, director of developer strategy for Google Cloud, told a Geekwire conference back in 2017 that the company was outgrowing its current office space in the greater Seattle area.

“We're bursting at the seams in our Fremont facility. Kirkland, we just added another building. And we've now broken ground on another building in South Lake Union that's basically Google cloud,” DeMichillie said.

What’s cloud computing? At its most basic it involves renting data storage rather than buying it, which is much cheaper.

“You use the computer at your desk, which is a very simple computer, to access vast resources around the world," said Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington.

Lazowska said Google is expanding in Seattle because this is the “world center of cloud computing.”

Google wants a bigger chunk of the multibillion-dollar cloud computing gold rush.

“The three leading companies in the cloud now are Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Amazon is very far ahead, Microsoft is a very strong number two, and Google is playing catch-up in terms of commercial offerings,” Lazowska said.

Google wants to mine the brainpower developed in the larger Seattle tech community. That can mean hiring away workers from other companies.

“There's just a tremendous amount of talent here that understands how to do the sort of engineering you need to do in order to operate services reliably at that enormous global scale,” Lazowska said.

What aspect of cloud computing is Google working on here? The company hasn’t said a lot and could not be reached for this story.

Vulcan Real Estate is developing the new Google campus on Mercer Street in South Lake Union. It will eventually include five office buildings over two and a half blocks, Vulcan said.

Google was expected to start moving into the campus this fall, but it’s not clear how the crane collapse might affect that timeline.