Google confirms Ames plan / Search engine plans offices, partnership with space agency:
Google Inc. confirmed Wednesday that it will build up to 1 million square feet of offices at NASA Ames Research Center and collaborate with the space agency on research surrounding topics such as supercomputing that could benefit everything from moon launches to online searches.
The partnership is intended to blend the expertise and huge resources of one of the leading Internet companies with an army of scientists focused on the stratosphere and beyond.
'Google and NASA share a common desire to bring the universe of information to people around the world,' said Eric Schmidt, the company's chief executive officer, in a statement. 'Imagine having a wide selection of images from the Apollo space mission at your fingertips whenever you want it.'
The partnership, announced late Wednesday at a press conference at the NASA facility, will bring a marquee tenant to the Ames Research Center, located at Moffett Field, a former military airfield near Mountain View that has been struggling to find a new purpose since the military pulled out in the 1990s.
For Google, the new partnership comes at a time when the Internet search engine is expanding by leaps and bounds, hiring on average 10 people per day. Experts say the company, which now employs more than 4,000 people, has ambitions beyond Internet search and could pose a serious threat to Microsoft Corp. for supremacy in desktop consumer computing.
This collaboration with NASA could also portend a new intellectual center for Silicon Valley, one that has been sorely missed since the heyday of Palo Alto's Xerox PARC, a seminal research facility that helped foster much of today's technology.
The details of the real estate part of the deal were vague. Schmidt said that the planning is still in the early stages and that the building on vacant land would take place over the course of many years.
In addition to supercomputing, the research and development between Google and NASA will involve biotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology, the development of extremely small devices.
Google stands to gain from learning about NASA's supercomputers, which could come in handy as the Mountain View search engine compiles even bigger indexes of information and video. NASA leaders cited the benefits of getting access to Google's search expertise to pick out nuggets of information from the volumes of data streaming back from satellites and human space launches."
Google Inc. confirmed Wednesday that it will build up to 1 million square feet of offices at NASA Ames Research Center and collaborate with the space agency on research surrounding topics such as supercomputing that could benefit everything from moon launches to online searches.
The partnership is intended to blend the expertise and huge resources of one of the leading Internet companies with an army of scientists focused on the stratosphere and beyond.
'Google and NASA share a common desire to bring the universe of information to people around the world,' said Eric Schmidt, the company's chief executive officer, in a statement. 'Imagine having a wide selection of images from the Apollo space mission at your fingertips whenever you want it.'
The partnership, announced late Wednesday at a press conference at the NASA facility, will bring a marquee tenant to the Ames Research Center, located at Moffett Field, a former military airfield near Mountain View that has been struggling to find a new purpose since the military pulled out in the 1990s.
For Google, the new partnership comes at a time when the Internet search engine is expanding by leaps and bounds, hiring on average 10 people per day. Experts say the company, which now employs more than 4,000 people, has ambitions beyond Internet search and could pose a serious threat to Microsoft Corp. for supremacy in desktop consumer computing.
This collaboration with NASA could also portend a new intellectual center for Silicon Valley, one that has been sorely missed since the heyday of Palo Alto's Xerox PARC, a seminal research facility that helped foster much of today's technology.
The details of the real estate part of the deal were vague. Schmidt said that the planning is still in the early stages and that the building on vacant land would take place over the course of many years.
In addition to supercomputing, the research and development between Google and NASA will involve biotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology, the development of extremely small devices.
Google stands to gain from learning about NASA's supercomputers, which could come in handy as the Mountain View search engine compiles even bigger indexes of information and video. NASA leaders cited the benefits of getting access to Google's search expertise to pick out nuggets of information from the volumes of data streaming back from satellites and human space launches."
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