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The entrance to Google’s office at 651 N. Northlake Way, one of the buildings occupied by the tech giant in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
The Center of the Universe is getting less Googley.
Google confirmed Friday that the company plans to bring all its employees in Seattle together at its South Lake Union campus, citing a desire for better collaboration and community. That means Google will eventually leave its longtime campus in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, which goes by that celestial nickname.
No specific timeline was immediately available. The consolidation plan does not appear to impact Google’s other major engineering hub in the Seattle region, a large complex in Kirkland, east of Lake Washington.
“We remain committed to our long-term presence in Seattle,” said Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson, in an emailed statement responding to GeekWire’s inquiry. Reiterating past statements, Lamont said Google is broadly “focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce.”
He added that the company has been in Washington state for nearly two decades and plans to continue to invest in its presence in the region.
A portion of Google’s campus in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Google first established a foothold in Fremont in 2006, its second major location in the region, after initially landing in Kirkland in 2004. It was part of a broader move to tap into the region’s tech talent pool.
The company led the trend of Silicon Valley tech companies establishing engineering centers in Seattle, followed by Facebook, Apple, and more than 100 others.
Google’s Fremont campus expanded over the years, and by 2018, the company had grown to occupy a 190,000-square-foot campus in the neighborhood.
Part of Google’s campus in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, with the Space Needle in the background. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
The company opened its South Lake Union campus starting in 2019, prior to the pandemic, but said at the time that it had decided to retain its Fremont office. These days, post-pandemic, the company maintains a hybrid work model, allowing employees to split their time between the office and remote work.
In Kirkland, the company grew its campus in 2016 but scrapped plans to further expand its footprint in 2023, amid larger cutbacks by Google and others.
Other major tech companies in the Fremont neighborhood include Adobe, Nvidia (through its acquisition of OctoAI), Brinc Drones, and Salesforce’s Tableau, which has reduced its presence in the neighborhood in recent years.
On the other hand, global health nonprofit PATH is moving its headquarters to Fremont, to a building previously occupied by Tableau, next to the Google campus.
“Fremont is still a highly desirable tech hub,” said Pete Hanning, executive director of the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, which is working to further establish the neighborhood as a location for tech companies.
GeekWire has been based in Fremont for more than a decade.
