Exclusive Picture Tour of Google’s Headquarters in Mountain View, California

Hey Guys,

One of the great things I decided to do at the beginning of 2016 was travel around the United States.

I started my journey in Los Angeles & then went to Las Vegas for the Affiliate Marketing Summit West 2016.

Now, I’m in San Francisco.

Right now, I’m at the Coursera office writing this post (…will give you a tour of Coursera office later; it is a really cool place).

If you are an online worker, you likely have a dream to visit the offices of companies like Google, Facebook & other tech giants.  I certainly do.

When I was researching about how can I take a tour of the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, I quickly learned that I needed to have a friend or someone I knew who can give me a tour.

An enlightened man once said, “You get what you dream for“.  This is exactly what happened with me here.

I have been in touch with a Google team member for a long time as I was helping her with a referral program. I asked her if she could help me organize a tour of Google’s offices when I visit San Francisco, and she happily agreed.

Since we were in a time crunch at Google, this is what I could see in about 2 hours.

Note: This is a scaled down version of all the images. You can find HQ images over here.

My visit to Google Headquarters: 20th Jan 2016

I started by meeting the Google for Work team in Mountain View, CA & this is what the visitors lobby looks like:

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I was greeted by Shannon, Brijesh, and Keith & then we had a brief conversation regarding work.

From there we went for lunch & after being in the U.S. for almost 15 days, for the first time I had a delicious & authentic Indian meal.

The Google Mountain View HQ was about 1.6 miles away, but before moving, I took this photo outside the Wishman office.

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After a 10 minute drive (and trying to get a parking spot for 5 minutes), we reached Google HQ. It’s a big area with multiple streets, but once I arrived inside the Google complex, I felt like I was home.

One prominent thing I noticed were the bicycles which are readily available everywhere. These bikes are for everyone who needs to move from one building to another. Yeah!

Google’s office complex is pretty huge & using bicycles or walking between buildings encourages employees to stay healthy.

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There were plenty of outdoor places where you can eat & enjoy the warmth of the California sun.

Here is a cool dinosaur that is part of their cultural program:

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Also there’s this:

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Once we were done walking around Google HQ, we went to a designated area for visitors.

That’s called the “Google visitor center – beta”. (Don’t ask me why it’s call beta.)

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These are from the Google visitor center (-beta):

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From here we went to Google’s shop to get some goodies.

Shannon was super sweet as she gifted me a few Google goodies. These next pictures are from Google’s Merchandise Store:

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Once we were done, we moved back to the Wishman office.

And before we said goodbye to each other, we took this final selfie:

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In the end, it was great seeing the real people behind those email addresses. Thanks to Shannon & Kathy for hosting me & showing me around.

 I hope you enjoyed this virtual tour of Google’s HQ at Mountain View.  Visiting Google’s HQ was a dream come true & next on my to-do list is to have a tour of the Facebook office.  

Like the enlightened man said,  “You get what you dream for.”

P.S: Feel free to use these images on your blog as they are licensed under a creative commons license. If you’d like, you can give credit to ShoutMeLoud.com for these images.

(On the next installment of me giving virtual office tours, I will give you a virtual tour of Coursera, which is a popular website to get degrees online.) (Update: That tour is here.)

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