LOS ANGELES — This city’s boardwalk community of Venice has long celebrated its seediness, accepting — embracing, really — the kind of sensory assaults that would faze more conventional places: beachfront bodybuilders, ragamuffin street vendors, tattoo artists, Hare Krishna chanters, skateboarders, drug dealers, gangs, homeless encampments, rowdy tourists, film crews and, more recently, a colony of medical marijuana dispensaries.

But Venice might have met its match in what many see as its most unsettling threat yet: Google.

“As soon as I walked in, they said: ‘You heard about Google? Why don’t you have your staff look into this?’ ” former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who began his professional career as a bodybuilder here 44 years ago, said after he emerged from a throng of worried muscle-bound admirers at Gold’s Gym. “It’s this conspiracy theory: ‘Google is coming! They are going to take over and wipe out our bodybuilding.’ ”

In November, Google moved an army of sales and technology employees into 100,000 square feet in two Venice buildings. It is negotiating leases on another 100,000 square feet, according to real estate agents. That includes the 31,000-square-foot expanse that is Gold’s Gym, the very bodybuilding symbol of Venice, if not the universe, where Mr. Schwarzenegger stopped by the other morning.

No matter that Google officials said they had no plans to displace the fabled gym. Although a spokesman, Jordan Newman, said, “We’re not taking over Gold’s,” the company’s reluctance to talk about its long-term ambition for Venice, or why it would want anything to do with the Gold’s building, has stirred a storm of speculation and anxiety.