Not a cash cow

That growth might not be so bad if Google had more to offer than higher property values. City council member Mike Kasperzak is generally proud to call Google a neighbor, but he points out that the company’s presence isn’t the economic windfall you might think. There's no sales tax on Google's search or ad businesses, and no sales tax on the free meals that Google dishes out to employees. "I don’t want them to leave, but they aren’t the cash cow that everyone thinks they are," says Kasperzak.

Meanwhile Google is creating a tremendous amount of traffic. Google now owns or leases practically every office building north of Highway 101, an area known as North Bayshore. The importance of the islandlike geography can't be overstated: Highway 101 is the primary thoroughfare that connects Mountain View to the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, and it completely separates the North Bayshore employees from their houses and apartments. By design there’s little to no housing in North Bayshore, and all traffic in or out of Google has to go across or through Highway 101. As Google grows that traffic is becoming unbearable. "It's a parking lot," says city council member Jac Siegel. "I live on a side street, and there are times I can’t even get out of my driveway to get onto the side street; that's how bad it's gotten."

Google's central hub is cut off from the world

Yet Google has shown no signs of slowing its growth. As of June 2013 Google employed 11,332 workers in Mountain View, but it told the city council that it hopes to add 3.7 million square feet of new development under the city's latest zoning plan — enough to eventually double its workers to 24,000 by a conservative estimate. And that’s without counting any other purchases or leases Google might make in the area. To Google's credit, only 52 percent of its employees drove alone to work in 2012 — one-third opted for company buses — but even 52 percent of 24,000 is daunting when some of Mountain View's roads are already overflowing.

Google declined interview requests for this story, but provided the following statement: "Google and more than 3,000 Google employees call Mountain View home, and to date we’ve added no new development. No matter what happens in the future, we’re committed to being good neighbors for the community and the natural environment. In fact, our shuttle program takes 5,000 cars off the road each day, and thousands more Google employees ride bikes to work."

In 2007, after Google's first shopping spree resulted in the company snapping up roughly one-quarter of local office space, some residents were already becoming concerned. "I worry about us becoming a one-company town," a local told the Silicon Valley Business Journal that year, even as a city council member praised Google for revitalizing the area. In 2009 a Google transportation planner eerily predicted the gridlock that Mountain View might face in five to ten years if growth continued unchecked.