Since 2005, Google’s Canada operations have been in the IT haven Kitchener-Waterloo metro of Ottawa. They don’t have their own building, however; their office is located in a shared building. Specifically, they’ve been limited to a space in the Tannery building in Kitchener, a building that’s also used by Communitech and Desire2Learn. Such a space is no longer fitting to their operations, it would seem; last year, Google announced they wanted to expand, get more engineers on board and get themselves into a bigger home. It seems that their announced wish has finally come to pass. Tomorrow, on January 14, 2016, Google plans to have a grand unveiling of a new facility in Kitchener that takes up an entire city block.
The building they’ll be taking up residence in is Breithuapt Block and was once a massive rubber manufacturing facility. The new 185,000 square foot office is all set to house over 350 Googlers for now. There was no word on hiring, but a building the size of a city block is sure to leave plenty of room for more workers. Google’s Canadian arm launched a blog to track their exploits, giving some possible insight into the type of work that will be taking place in the massive new facility. The gamut of possibilities here is fairly wide, of course. Everything from Project Loon and self-driving cars to a localized Android division to cater more closely to the Canadian market could be possible, as well as completely new initiatives that are as-yet unannounced. With the available space and the number of workers that could be housed here, it’s anybody’s guess as to the future directions the company’s Kitchener office could take.
Alongside the new facility, Google also plans to take the wraps off some of their locally developed products in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Hopefully, this should give some extra insight into future developments. VR is apparently set to take the spotlight, with a big unveiling of some sort, involving new technology, being promised. A new revision of Cardboard or perhaps a full-fledged VR system to compete with Samsung, HTC and Oculus are possible, of course, but no further word was given.