Google building new UK headquarters in Central London
Google is building its new UK headquarters in Central London. This week the company purchased a 2.4-acre plot in Kings Cross, with plans to build a new 1 million square foot HQ building.
Google has not disclosed how much it paid for the Central London site but sources have said that the company is investing £650 million in the site.
The new HQ is expected to be valued upwards of £1 billion ($1.6 billion) once construction is completed.
“This is a big investment by Google,” Matt Britin, Google’s VP for Northern and Central Europe, said in a statement. “We’re committing further to the UK — where computing and the web were invented.
It’s good news for Google, for London and for the UK.”
Construction on the new building will commence later this year and Google’s UK HQ is expected to range from seven to eleven stories tall. Construction is expected to take up to three years with Google moving UK operations from London Victoria to the new building in 2016.
The move is also a change in the way the company operates overseas – Google has traditionally leased overseas offices but the purchase in London follows the purchase of office space in Paris and Dublin.
