Google inaugurates the Europaallee campus with a slide

5000 employees work for the Google group in Zurich. Actually. On a tour of a new building, visitors see billiard and ping-pong tables, table football, a bedroom, but no place to work.

“Hello Google”: a reception desk on Europaallee. June 27, 2022.

Michael Buholzer / Keystone

Every Friday there is a party at Google. New employees then swing onto the slide and once they land on the bottom of the second floor courtyard, they are considered part of the team. That’s what Samuel Leiser, Head of Communications at Google Switzerland, says. He himself sang “S Vogellisi” during the admission ritual, the Swiss dialect song from the Bernese Oberland, he says in front of the entrance to the slide, while a handful of radio reporters hold microphones under his nose.

Meanwhile, the cameramen are looking for a stunt man, actually an office worker who could be hired to use the slide. After all, they don’t just want to show the slide – perhaps the best-known symbol of Google’s playful work culture – unused in the recordings.

In the case of other companies, that would hardly be worth mentioning, but in the case of Google, it is followed by film footage and headlines: The tech giant is opening a new office. Although some of the building has been in use for almost three years, it has not yet been officially inaugurated. Covid didn’t allow it sooner. But it’s been official since Monday afternoon: “Hello Google” is now also heard in the offices on Europaallee.

Colorful and playful: insight into the new Google building in Zurich.  June 27, 2022.

Colorful and playful: insight into the new Google building in Zurich. June 27, 2022.

Michael Buholzer / Keystone

It is also not missing at the Europaallee location: the slide in the new Google building.  June 27, 2022.

It is also not missing at the Europaallee location: the slide in the new Google building. June 27, 2022.

Michael Buholzer / Keystone

For the “Zoogler”, as the Zurich Google employees call themselves, the Europaallee is not just a new office building, no, it is another “campus”. That sounds like a university, and that’s what it’s meant to be, after all, research is done here. In Zurich, Google operates the largest development site outside of the USA, as emphasized by all the speakers at the official part of the inauguration ceremony. People are proud of Zurich and have been committed to the location for years.

In 2004, Google started with a two-person office on Limmatquai. The location on the Hürlimann site was inaugurated in 2008, and the building in the old Sihlpost in 2017. In 2019, Google nested in Europaallee. And in the future, as Leiser confirms on the tour of the new “Campus”, there will be one location each on General-Guisan-Quai and one on Bärengasse. This means that Google will soon have six offices in the city of Zurich.

There are currently around 5,000 employees spread across the locations, which is around 800 more than last year. Thanks to the admission ritual, the slide should be in lively use at the moment.

Google operates more and more locations in Zurich

But what are all the people doing here? Eating, drinking, playing and sleeping is what you get on the Leiser building tour. It shows visitors a canteen, a snack bar, a coffee counter, a relaxation room, a play area with a pool table and two table tennis tables and a ping-pong table. The tour does not only reach the actual offices.

It can be assumed that the Google employees in Zurich also work. In any case, former and current employees on the Glassdoor job platform report annual salaries of up to CHF 240,000.

If you believe the speakers at the building’s inauguration, the IT specialists have developed YouTube over the past few years so that videos can also be cut and uploaded with a cell phone. They improved Google Lens, Google’s image recognition program, which can translate text in real time and recognize objects. They developed a new functionality within Google Flights, thanks to which the CO2– Can compare emissions from different flight connections. And, of course, they also sell Google’s standard products: ads on the Internet and IT systems in the cloud.

And the slide? Apart from the stunt man, who slid down camera-ready for the TV journalists, it remained unused on this Monday afternoon. As well as the pool and ping pong tables.

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