Corporate headquarters is the part of a corporate structure that deals with tasks such as strategic planning, corporate communications, taxes, law, books of record, marketing, finance, human resources, and information technology. Corporate headquarters takes responsibility for the overall success of the corporation and ensures corporate governance . It is sometimes referred to as the head office , which is the location where the executives of a business work and where many of the key business decisions are made. Generally, corporate headquarters acts as a core when the business is operating.
31-553: The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc . It is located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California . The original complex, with 2 million square feet (190,000 square meters) of office space, is the company's second largest square footage assemblage of Google buildings, after Google's 111 Eighth Avenue building in New York City , which
62-474: A landfill accepting garbage from San Francisco. Shoreline Park opened in 1983, with some initial problems from methane fires. In 1987, Shoreline won the League of California Cities ' Helen Putnam Award for public works. Shoreline Park now features an 18-hole links-style golf course with a pro shop and driving range, Shoreline Golf Links, and a 50-acre (20 ha) artificial lake. On the lake's eastern shore
93-492: A bowling alley, massage rooms, organic gardens, and eighteen cafeterias with diverse menus. Google installed replicas of SpaceShipOne and a dinosaur skeleton. Since 2017, solar panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two solar carports, capable of producing 1.6 megawatts of electricity. At the time of installation, Google believed it to be the largest in the United States among corporations. The panels provide
124-677: A few blocks away. In September 2023, Google announced the Google Visitor Experience, a visitor center next to the Googleplex which occupies the building formerly known as Charleston East, and now known as Gradient Canopy. The visitor center includes a Google Store , a public plaza, a café, and public art, and opened on October 12, 2023. The Googleplex is located between Charleston Road, Amphitheatre Parkway, and Shoreline Boulevard in north Mountain View, California , close to
155-589: A pair of burrowing owls so that it could sell a parcel of land to Google to build a hotel at Shoreline Boulevard and Charleston Road. Eviction of the owls is controversial because suitable alternative habitat has vanished due to suburban sprawl. Development continued to encroach on the owls' habitat when, in 2010, the City of Mountain View approved Google's plan to build a 6.9-acre (2.8 ha) recreational park for its employees, so that they can play tennis, disc golf, shuffleboard and other activities on Google property that
186-599: Is featured in the 2013 film The Internship , with the Georgia Tech campus standing in as a double, because Google disallows filming on the campus grounds for privacy reasons. It was the inspiration for the fictional Hooli headquarters in the HBO TV series Silicon Valley . Corporate headquarters The corporate headquarters includes: the CEO ( chief executive officer ) as a key person and their support staff such as
217-459: Is headquartered has a significant influence on the company's activities, including its business practices and its corporate philanthropic giving. Corporate headquarters is considered a business's most prestigious location. A corporation's headquarters may also bring prestige to the city it is located in and help attract other businesses to the area. Businesses frequently locate their corporate headquarters in large cities, such as New York, because of
248-635: Is the Shoreline Boathouse, which offers sailboat , windsurfing , kayak , canoe , rowboat , and pedalboat rentals, as well as sailing, windsurfing, and kayaking classes. The adjacent Shoreline American Bistro is open daily and offers a variety of food to lake goers. Shoreline Amphitheatre is next to the golf course. The Rengstorff House , a historic Victorian mansion moved to the park from its original location elsewhere in Mountain View, and Michaels at Shoreline Restaurant are also in
279-537: The Computer History Museum , and Century Theatres . Moffett Field is nearby to the east. Google in its 2012-year-end annual report said it had 3.5 million square feet of office space in Mountain View. Google has another large campus in Mountain View dubbed "The Quad" at 399 North Whisman Road about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the Googleplex. In 2013, Google leased the entire Mayfield Mall , an enclosed shopping mall that last operated in 1984 and
310-685: The Shoreline Park wetlands . Employees living in San Francisco, the East Bay, or South Bay may take a free Wi-Fi -enabled Google shuttle to and from work. The shuttles are powered by a fuel blend of 95% petroleum diesel and 5% biodiesel and have the latest emissions reduction technology. To the north lies the Shoreline Amphitheatre and Intuit , and to the south lies Microsoft 's Silicon Valley research complex,
341-597: The 42-acre (17-hectare) site. Google planned in 2015 a 60-acre (24-hectare) addition designed by Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels in North Bayshore. The site, however, was granted to LinkedIn by the city councilors and the Google project was revised in 2016, with 3 buildings to be built on 2 different sites east of Googleplex in Mountain View: one immediately next to Googleplex, and the two smaller ones
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#1732773305968372-457: The CEO office and other CEO related functions; the "corporate policy making" functions: Include all corporate functions necessary to steer the firm by defining and establishing corporate policies; the corporate services: Activities that combine or consolidate certain enterprise-wide needed support services, provided based on specialized knowledge, best practices, and technology to serve internal (and sometimes external) customers and business partners;
403-421: The City undertook the daunting task of planning a regional park that would provide citizens with environmentally savvy recreation opportunities, from a site that was originally a landfill. The city of Mountain View bought the site in 1967 to build a recreational facility. However, the cost of importing earth to raise it by 20 feet (6.1 m) in order to prevent flooding was too high, so it was instead operated as
434-449: The Googleplex, for $ 319 million. Because the buildings are of relatively low height, the complex sprawls out over a large area of land. The interior of the headquarters is furnished with items like shade lamps and giant rubber balls and the lobby contains a piano and a projection of current live Google search queries. Facilities include free laundry rooms (Buildings 40, 42 & CL3), two small swimming pools, multiple sand volleyball courts,
465-530: The London headquarters and to perform the tax function and legal compliance function within the United Kingdom. Most of the multi-business firms have their corporate headquarters performs obligatory functions. It represents all businesses legally in respect of the regulator(s) and aggregates the financial, tax, and legal data. Similarly, the corporate headquarters can also function as the company's face to
496-578: The SGI project was a significant departure from typical corporate campuses and which challenged conventional thinking about private and public space, and awarded the project the ASLA Centennial Medallion in 1999. The former SGI facilities were leased by Google beginning in 2003. A redesign of the interiors was completed by Clive Wilkinson Architects in 2005. In June 2006, Google purchased some of Silicon Graphics's properties, including
527-706: The built-up area of the park. Walkers, runners, bike riders, et al., can enjoy miles of paved and unpaved trails, some of which are part of the San Francisco Bay Trail . The trails connect to the Stevens Creek Trail at the eastern edge of the park and the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve on the western edge. Through the developed park, one reaches a wildlife refuge at the edge of the bay, where many birds can be seen at almost any time. Meadowlands near
558-492: The company bought in 2010. "Googleplex" is a portmanteau of Google and complex (meaning a complex of buildings ) and a reference to googolplex , the name given to the large number 10, or 10. The site was previously occupied by Silicon Graphics (SGI). The office space and corporate campus is located within a larger 26-acre (11-hectare) site that contains Charleston Park, a 5-acre (2-hectare) public park; improved access to Permanente Creek; and public roads that connect
589-409: The corporate headquarters is more entrepreneurial in nature. It is considered the major source of corporate advantages and key in justifying the configuration of diversified companies. It comprises various horizontal and vertical coordination activities, such as the leveraging of the synergy potential and the application of management innovation. The "control role" of the corporate headquarter guides
620-542: The corporate site to Shoreline Park and the Bay Trail. The project, launched in 1994, was built on the site of one of the few working farms in the area and was city owned at the time (identified as "Farmer's Field" in the planning documents). It was a creative collaboration between SGI, StUDIOS Architecture, SWA Group, and the Planning and Community Development Agency of the City of Mountain View, California . The objective
651-469: The country or internationally. Companies, however, generally do not have two corporate headquarters, even if they are international companies, although they may have branches that take on some of the responsibility for making corporate decisions in other countries. For example, if a company is headquartered in New York but has an office in London, the company may assign a specific location in London to act as
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#1732773305968682-406: The customer and build reputational value. Shared services are services provided by the corporate headquarters for various business units. Owing to the aggregation of demand for these services, the headquarters can realize scale effects and provide them at lower total costs. Typical shared services are HR, IT, and marketing services. In contrast to the first two roles, the "value creation role" of
713-459: The greater business opportunities available there. The corporate headquarters may or may not be in the location in which the business is incorporated or where the majority of its employees work. Offices of a business that are not the corporate headquarters are called "branch offices". The headquarters is often selected by the founders of the company to be conveniently located to where they live. Branch offices may then be opened, either locally, within
744-407: The interface: Reporting line and bi-directional link between corporate headquarters and business units. Most other divisions and branches report to the corporate headquarters and staff may visit there periodically for training or other instructions". The corporate services are often relocated into a separate legal entity called shared services center . Research shows that the city in which a company
775-724: The mouth of Permanente Creek in Shoreline Park provide critical remnant habitat for western burrowing owls ( Athene cunicularia ), a bird that has vanished from many counties in the Bay Area . The owl was listed as a Species of Special Concern (a pre-listing category under the Endangered Species Act ) by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1979, and its Bay Area population continues to decline. In 2008, City of Mountain View evicted
806-507: The operations of the individual businesses toward the corporate goals. It can either focus on the financial outcome, or the operational behaviour, with both options implying very different approaches and requirements in terms of data and operations. Shoreline Park, Mountain View Shoreline at Mountain View is a park in Mountain View, California , United States. The city park was dedicated in 1983, some fifteen years after
837-536: The power for 30% of the peak electricity demand in their solar-powered buildings. Four 100 kW Bloom Energy Servers were shipped to Google in July 2008, as the first customer of Bloom Energy. The Android lawn statues were outside of Building 44 on Charleston Road, and were relocated on the Google campus at 1981 Landings Drive. They include a giant green statue of the Android logo and additional statues to represent all
868-553: The versions of the Android operating system. In 2013, construction began on a new 1.1-million-square-foot (100,000-square-meter) campus dubbed "Bay View", adjoining the original campus on 42 acres (17 ha) leased from the NASA Ames Research Center and overlooking San Francisco Bay at Moffett Federal Airfield . The estimated cost of the project was $ 120 million with a target opening date of 2015. NBBJ
899-402: Was leased by Hewlett-Packard from 1986 to 2002. The semi-secret Google X Lab , which is the development lab for items such as Google Glass , is located in "ordinary two-story red-brick buildings" about 1 ⁄ 2 mile (800 meters) from the Googleplex. It has a "burbling fountain out front and rows of company-issued bikes, which employees use to shuttle to the main campus." The Googleplex
930-583: Was the architect and this was the first time Google has designed its own buildings. The addition is off the northeast corner of the complex, by the Stevens Creek Nature Study Area and Shoreline Park . Before announcing the construction, Google, through its internal real estate firm, Planetary Ventures, sought permission from the City of Mountain View to build bridges over the adjacent Stevens Creek . Google's 2012 year-end annual report noted it can develop only 7 acres (2.8 ha) of
961-400: Was to develop in complementary fashion the privately owned corporate headquarters and adjoining public greenspace. Key design decisions placed parking for nearly 2000 cars underground, enabling SWA to integrate the two open spaces with water features, shallow pools, fountains, pathways, and plazas. The project was completed in 1997. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) noted that