Google, MySpace Set Up Shop in San Fran

Earlier this week, Google opened an office in San Francisco and MySpace has started blasting out invites to the opening of its San Francisco office.

Google set up its taco stand at 345 Spear St., where it is occupying several floors and around 200,000 square feet at what is known as Hills Plaza. Reports claim the new digs will hold about 800 Googlers.

Google’s official line is that many of its users, employees, advertisers and publishers are in San Francisco, which it also describes as “an important base for recruiting.” Moreover, a spokesperson said, “we are happy to have a presence in the city that will allow us to be more responsive to customer needs and cut down commute times for many of our employees.”

So even Googlers are frustrated with California commutes. Huh.

But now MySpace is planning to come down from its lofty position in Beverly Hills to open an office in San Fran. The company has slated its San Fran launch for Oct. 17 at 9:30 p.m. at the Museum of Modern Art, no doubt providing yet another cocktail party for journos, analysts and Silicon Valley insiders to take in after the first day of the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Summit comes to a close.

I know this for fact because I got an invite, or rather, an invite placeholder, yesterday. The e-mail, “from” CEO Chris DeWolfe, says a formal invite will be following and asked me to RSVP by Oct. 12.
However, MySpace is being hush-hush about the details. I tried to ferret out the MySpace San Fran address but a spokeswoman declined to provide additional information. My curiosity piqued, I accepted.

OK, I understand MySpace going to the San Fran well after just a few years of existence, likely for many of the same reasons Google enumerated above.

But I’m a little surprised that Google has waited 9+ years to come down from Mountain View and plumb the riches that San Fran has to offer. The city is a veritable weigh station for Silicon Valley wunderkinds and wannabes.

Surely Google execs have had many a meeting downtown with startups they either acquired, or hoped to acquire. Perhaps the new pad signals that Google will start picking up the acquisition pace.

So, where is this all going, this movement of Google and MySpace downtown? Well, I don’t want to suggest Google is considering taking MySpace.com off of Fox/News Corp.’s hands but… what the hay! What else are blogs for?

Here’s a disruptive scenario: Google buys MySpace, prompting Microsoft to buy Facebook and then the rest of the dominoes fall, with vendors snapping up LinkedIn, Twitter, et al.

After the second dot-com bubble bursts, we will all look wistfully back on the fateful moves of Google and MySpace into the city in October 2007, proclaiming “that is where this tale of woe started.”

Or not. Before I devolve totally into unadulterated fiction, let me bid you TGIF.