The company tells the Wall Street Journal that about a third of its bikes have GPS trackers so far, and they're offering insight into just how far the two-wheelers will go. While many tend to stay around Mountain View (some locals treat them like community rides), others have been taken as far as Alaska and Mexico.

In many ways, the trackers and locks represent Google's ongoing loss of innocence. Free-to-ride campus bikes might have sounded great in Google's utopian early days, but that's at odds with a reality where people will routinely borrow or steal anything that isn't nailed down. Even though the company can easily afford to lose bikes, it doesn't look good to waste money and resources for the sake of maintaining a company tradition.