Not really. I live in NYC and my company has an office in NYC and still never go in and don't care if I ever do. We're likely going to retain a space once our lease is up, but it's going to be modeled very differently. Our business has some physical co-location requirements for certain aspects, but no one doing tech work needs to do anything beyond meetings. And we are all 100% comfortable doing them over video. If we want a rallying spot for once or twice a year jamborees, we could do it at a hotel or a much smaller permanent space. There's no reason Google would need to pay $2B unless they were rejecting remote work.
Ah yes your anecdotal experience clearly means one of the largest companies in the world is rejecting remote work by buying an office they already lease.
It gives some insight into the worker mentality. Investing in premium office space at the height of a huge real estate bubble during a huge shift to remote work says a lot about Google's confidence in office space remaining in high demand, especially since we have on record Google execs pushing for going back to the office. I don't know if this is just Google doubling down but it's an interesting move on their part given the timing.
Google has quite a bit of headcount in NY (12,000 now, up from 7,000 in 2018 according to the article) and at that current pace of expansion they could probably still use the space even if only a percentage of employees still work in office.
More importantly, this seems like it's mostly to hedge given that office building prices in NY are reaching new lows and they've already leased space in this building for a while.
I'm not sure that last part is true. The building hasn't been delivered yet. Google did announce the lease a couple years ago, but I doubt that lease has commenced as the building is still under construction.
That being said, Google does seem to snag big properties in a down market. They bought 111 Eighth Avenue back in 2010 around the financial crisis.
