Google, the search engine giant, is reportedly leasing about 35,000 square feet of workspace in the Mission District of San Francisco in order to accommodate engineers who'd rather not move to its Silicon City headquarters.
According to the Financial Times, Google has taken up the space to house more than 200 developers and the start-ups it bought or will buy in the future.
Although Google has not confirmed the news officially, sources familiar with the matter said that the deal is definite.
"When Google is buying companies, they don't want to work in the big corporate building in San Francisco or Mountain View. So they are acquiring something cool in the Mission where engineers want to work," a source from the neighborhood told the publication.
The building, located at 298 Alabama Street, was used as a printing and catalogue office by Howard Quinn for about 50 years. The structure has also been designed to aid manufacturing and could be used to make devices like wearable tech, reports Venture Capital Post.
News of the new lease has fired up speculations about Google buying hardware makers in its attempt to diversify from being the world's largest search engine to robotics and to being a pioneer in the Internet of Things.
Google isn't the only tech magnate keen on the Bay Area: Twitter and Yammer also have offices in San Francisco.
The tech boom in the city may have upped values of commercial real estate in the city, but residents fear that the influx could "price them out or change the feel of their communities," reports The San Francisco Chronicle.
"The economy in Silicon Valley is hot and will actually get hotter in the short run. But in the long term, we have risks to the expansion. One of those is income inequality. This could become a land of protests and social unrest if we don't address this issue," Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, told Mercury News.
Indeed, residents have been protesting the sudden "gentrification" that has taken over the city. Though neighborhoods are transforming into upscale hubs, housing costs are going up too.
At the Google Bus protests, Rebecca Solnit, a local author and historian told News Fix KQED:
"I think the reason a lot of us were out there blockading this morning is that we're looking at a city that could become homogeneous, that could become a very dense suburb ... as it becomes a bedroom community for the Silicon Valley."
