They make hardware prototypes. When you do that having your own machine shop can lower the iteration time and thus speed up the development.

Just from the top of my head: waymo develops their own lidars, akamai obviously needed a ton of machining for the kite, project loon probably had machined components. And those are just the flashy examples we heard about outside of the company. They can have ton of other projects which didn’t get to the point where we heard about them but required hardware prototyping.

Duh! Of course!

I think Google and I only think search/ads. I forgot Alphabet has all that other stuff going on.

So does Alphabet.

All other projects are on the cancellation list, so don't worry overmuch about them.

Google as a company manufactures hardware, it makes sense to have a machine shop for prototypes.

Google was founded by burners who want to take cool shit to the desert.

They are in the rich people’s glamping camp. They haven’t lifted a finger on the playa, ever.

Google used to indulge employees' interests. They fund, or used to fund, "the generator", a build shop in Reno. I know a Googler who openly worked on a small art project at the office, albeit a small part of the work.

I'm not saying that Google has machine shops purely for burning man. But I strongly suggest that when the idea has been floated in various locations, one recurring theme is "yeah let's! And let's get some lasers and propane burners!", and I also believe that some managers were thinking "great, this is the culture we want."

The register calls it "the chocolate factory" as a reference to Willy Wonka. Shame they descended into evil.

I don’t mean the rank and file but Page and Brin. They’ve only ever gone the glamping sparkle pony route.

> I'm not saying that Google has machine shops purely for burning man. But I strongly suggest that when the idea has been floated in various locations, one recurring theme is "yeah let's! And let's get some lasers and propane burners!", and I also believe that some managers were thinking "great, this is the culture we want."

There was! It was the predecessor to the Garage. I suspect because the machine shop boys wouldn’t let them use the real toys.

Lots of reasons. Prototyping consumer goods of various sorts, etc.

IIRC it was started in earnest for Nexus phone prototypes in the early 2010s.

We had one at the Facebook offices too, as a side-effect of the Oculus acquisition. Hardware prototyping is fun