SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Facebook on Tuesday announced it would move corporate headquarters from Palo Alto to Menlo Park, California, a 57-acre campus expected to become the fast-growing company's long-term home.
The social network company, which just celebrated its 7th birthday last Friday, will occupy 1 million square feet of space in the 57-acre business park in Menlo Park. The complex used to be Sun Microsystems headquarters and became available after it was taken over by Oracle, which relocated Sun's workers.
At a press conference in Menlo Park city hall, chief financial officer David Ebersman said Facebook has signed a 15-year lease for the bayside campus, with the option to purchase after five years. The company has also purchased 22 acres of property next to the campus.
Facebook currently has some 2,000 employees and the new Menlo Park headquarters can house up to 3,600 people. According to a former Sun employee, most of them used to have private offices. Local media reported that Facebook had been working to tear down walls to create an open floor plan it enjoys at its current office.
The company's new address is 1601 Willow Road, Menlo Park, while, coincidentally, its current new building is 1601 S. California Avenue in Palo Alto.
Facebook has called Palo Alto home since June 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg and his classmates relocated the startup from their Harvard dorm.
Also on Tuesday, Google announced that it had leased the iconic "binocular building" in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, as part of the company's growth initiative with more than 6,000 employees to be hired this year.
Besides Silicon Valley giants such as Apple, Google is facing fierce competition from upstarts like Facebook on the booming markets of mobile and social networking. Last fall, Google announced a 10-percent pay raise for all employees as Facebook and other companies try to lure away top engineers.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Facebook announces move to new headquarters
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