Google Buys Calif. Garage in Which It Was Born

Google, the world’s leading search engine, has purchased the Silicon Valley, Calif., home at which its founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, then Stanford University graduate students, rented a garage to work on their search technology that would change the Internet forever, the Associated Press reports via the New York Post.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google purchased the 1,900-square-foot home in Menlo Park from Susan Wojcicki, the firm’s vice president of product management, for an undisclosed sum, according to the AP. Wojcicki, who didn’t work for Google when its founders rented the garage space, knew Brin via a mutual acquaintance, and she agreed to rent out the area for $1,700 a month for assistance in paying her mortgage, the AP reports.

The then-25-year-old students spent much of their time working on the search engine and lounging in the hot tub that can still be found on the property, according to the AP.

Brin and Page initially took over the garage when Google had recently been incorporated with backing to the tune of $1 million from investors, the AP reports. Google currently holds roughly $10 billion in cash assets and touts a market value of about $125 billion, according to the AP.

Hewlett-Packard, the PC giant, doled out some $1.7 million for a Palo Alto, Calif., garage in which cofounder William Hewlett started the firm in 1938, the AP reports.

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