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City Life

Edie G. Lush

Wednesday, 25th June 2008

Childcare costs soar, house prices plunge, and the rich get sued by Mr Riches

Meanwhile, south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley at Mountain View, where Google has its headquarters, all is not entirely well among those Googlers old enough to have children. The internet company famous for its ad-revenue-driven search engine and online mapping decided last year that its corporate childcare arrangements at a disused local school weren’t quite up to scratch. It set about planning a new scheme, and three months ago it presented plans to the local architecture board for a 46,500 sq ft mini-me Googleplex in nearby Palo Alto. The site is across the street from another new 18,500 sq ft Google daycare facility already under construction. The space per child is very generous — between 186 and 231 sq ft per child versus a legally advised 35-50 sq ft per child. Perhaps understandably, the cost of Googlecare is rising, and the rate of increase is raising eyebrows among Google employees. According to Valleywag, Silicon Valley’s ‘tech gossip rag’, the cost is rising by nearly 70 per cent. Should you be unlucky enough to have two kids in the daycare facility your monthly outgoings would be between $3,420 and $4,780, far above the local going rate and equivalent to hiring a nanny instead. Google’s head of human resources is rumoured to be balking at these prices to the extent of pulling his own children out of the scheme. So much for the company’s logo, ‘Don’t be evil’. Still, not all is lost. If Google is worried about its weekly press clippings, it can always garner hope from Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s admission that he’s using the company’s search engine to research his vice-presidential candidates.

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