Big city views from three terraces. Meandering multi-floor stairwells that give it an Austin greenbelt vibe. And an airstream trailer that embraces Austin's food truck dining culture.
That's all part of the new Google office in downtown Austin. The new 300,000-square-foot space spread across several floors at 500 W. 2nd St. is the new work home of 450 Google employees. And the company says two more floors of the building are being constructed now and will open next year.
Google has had a significant presence in Austin since it acquired Austin-based Postini about 10 years ago. More recently, in 2015, the company made Austin its second location for the testing of self-driving cars (a business that has since become Waymo).
Now, the massive tech company has a wide variety of workers in Austin. The new downtown office includes teams working with Android, G Suite, Google Play, people operations, finance, engineering and marketing.
Along with opening its office to journalists Tuesday, Google Austin highlighted a recent $250,000 grant to the Austin Community Foundation to help create a new Hispanic Impact Fund. And it announced on Tuesday a $250,000 Google.org grant to Workforce Solutions in support of a Master Community Workforce Plan.
The company has awarded around $3.7 million in grants to Texas nonprofits since 2011.
“A major part of our effort to make Austin more affordable is lifting people out of poverty and into good paying jobs,” Mayor Steve Adler said in a prepared statement. "Today’s grant from Google.org to Workforce Solutions is a big contribution to our mission of lifting 10,000 Austinites out of poverty and into good jobs over the next five years."
