Laura Macias, mayor of Mountain View, California, where Google is based, disagrees that Google isn’t a “model citizen,” as portrayed in an article published by the Los Angeles Times. In fact, things sound downright peachy.
Mountain View Mayor Defends Google
“[The article] was so unrepresentative of how the city feels,” Macias tells murdok. “We love having them.”
The LA Times article focused on good as well as bad, but negative commentary is often heavier. Local residents complained that Google had “displaced small companies to make room for its own troops.”
Mayor Macias notes instead the positive effect the company has had on the town, especially around Castro Street. “There are lots of little startups percolating,” she says, and many of them are inspired by Google’s presence, 110 of them biotech startups.
But that doesn’t mean another dotcom bust is eminent.
“Certainly we saw this at the end of the 90’s, but now I think people are smarter and there’s substance to their products.”
Macias downplayed fears that Google was dominating the city too much, and noted that Google isn’t the only game in town. Microsoft has a large presence in Mountain View, as do HP, AOL, Symantec, and VeriSign.
As for the founders’ odd relationship with NASA and their use of Moffett Field for their personal runway, Macias relays that it’s not as sinister as it may sound to some.
“I’d say NASA has this responsibility since they took over Moffett Field from the Navy to have income. You have to have some revenue, and this allows them to have some revenue.”
She added also that Google has been good about meeting with the city and cooperating, and praises Google’s environmental efforts such as their “solar energy-generating parking covers.”
