Gosdot

The office isn’t exactly new in fact it’s been at it’s current Midtown loaction for over a year now. (I have a neighbor who has been working there since it opened, so I had the privilege of knowing about it’s existence for a while now.) Google posted this story on GoogleBlog a few months ago…

Check it out: Google’s quiet presence in Atlanta is becoming less so, since our engineering and sales teams in Atlanta have recently teamed up. We couldn’t be more excited about our brand new (and very Googly) Midtown office. The Atlanta sales team is in its sixth year and continues to grow. The newer engineering team has been hard at work developing the Google Web Toolkit, which launched recently at JavaOne.

There are many reasons one might assume Google has deployed one of it’s units to Atlanta. Obviously, Georgia Tech and Emory are here. After Google’s recent moves into science with it’s partnership with Nasa I can imagine a play for some of Emory’s research will soon follow. Tech is a no-brainer, it’s the MIT of the south. So those two things might leave you complascent in thinking that you have it all figured out. I beg to differ.

I postulate that Google has come to the ATL for one mainly hidden reason… Advertising.

Yes, the Advertising market in Atlanta is quickly growing but still vastly underrated. For one, Atlanta is relatively cheap compared to other major advertising clusters in London, New York, LA and San Fran. We’re one of the few places in the countries that has a media production market that’s still quickly growing (meanwhile, music and film recording studios are shutting down all over the country). Clear Channel is here and with Google recently delving into radio advertising, I’m sure that’s a relationship they’ll attempt to build as well.

There are a number of other reasons I can think of, Radio One, Turner, Coke, Delta… Strategically, it only makes sense that Google place themselves in the major clusters of the world but Atlanta, especially, seems like it will have a lot to offer the countries’ coolest place to work.