Google has spent $1 billion on San Jose real estate as Downtown West remains paused

SAN JOSE — Google has placed a billion-dollar real estate bet on what it believes to be a bright future for San Jose, crafting new campuses on the north side of town even as its plans for an ambitious downtown transit village remain paused.

This news organization determined that Google has spent at least $1.08 billion acquiring property in San Jose since 2016. The purchases were accomplished through 45 property acquisitions, as shown by grant deeds on file with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office. Google bought every parcel through all-cash deals.

Since December 2016, Google has assembled a sprawling San Jose footprint across three major areas of the city.

Google has spent $459 million to buy an array of properties in downtown San Jose, $452 million to purchase buildings in the Alviso district, and another $164.2 million to grab several office buildings along Tasman Drive in North San Jose.

The Alviso sites, which Google calls Meadow Point, along with the company’s Tasman campus a few blocks away, are emerging as key pieces of Google’s growing North San Jose presence.

“We’re excited to deepen our roots in San Jose with the opening of our new Meadow Point campus,” said Matt Werner, Google vice president of global real estate. “Together with our nearby Tasman campus, we’re establishing a major innovation hub in North San Jose where teams are working on some of Google’s biggest priorities.”

A Google employee walks on the Meadow Point Campus in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)

The company has placed its Google Core team at the new Meadow Point campus, according to Scott Foster, vice president and head of real estate and workplace services with Google.

The team is responsible for building the technical foundations behind Google’s flagship products, protecting users’ online safety, and maintaining the company’s global IT infrastructure, said Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president for Google Core. Key products include search, Gmail, and YouTube.

“We care deeply about this city and look forward to growing here for years to come,” Werner said.

Along with its purchases over the years, Google has leased a four-building office campus near the corner of North First Street and Brokaw Road, just a few miles from other North San Jose sites.

The three North San Jose work hubs — in Alviso, on Tasman, and at First and Brokaw — contain office buildings that together total just under 2.13 million square feet. That’s roughly the size of Westfield Valley Fair mall in West San Jose.

The buildings contain enough square footage to accommodate 8,500 to 10,000 workers, using typical square feet per employee ratios that modern municipal planners employ.

“It’s very encouraging to see Google doing this,” said Tim Bajarin, principal executive with Campbell-based Creative Strategies, which tracks the technology sector. “Google also understands it is sitting on a very serious growth spurt for all of tech. Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules for business.”

Google is seeking a balance between expansion and the potential upheaval in jobs that artificial intelligence could unleash, analyst Rob Enderle said.

“As these tech companies evolve, they are laying off in some areas and they are staffing up in other areas,” Enderle said. “Google gets it. They discovered there are problems with depending too much on AI, and they have backed off on layoffs.”

Google’s string of property purchases is helping generate increased property taxes, this news organization found.

In a deal just a few days before Christmas 2016, Google used the alias Rhyolite Enterprises to pay $55 million for a nondescript downtown San Jose building that once was the site of a long-gone bakery.

At the time of the purchase, Pac Bell wasn’t obliged to pay property taxes on the building due to rules that governed Pac Bell at the time. Public documents show the site’s assessed value was zero prior to Google’s ownership, which means it produced no tax revenue.

The latest assessed value for the site — even though the building has been bulldozed — is $51.9 million.

In 2018, Google began expanding its Alviso campus when it paid $154.5 million for two curving office buildings, one at 4300 North First St. and the other at 4400 North First St.

The assessed value of the two buildings just before the deal was $154.5 million. The latest assessed value as of January 2025 was $205.5 million, an increase of 33%.

Rising property taxes can shove more money into the coffers of cities, counties, school districts and other public entities.

“Nearly a decade ago, Google began making a bet on San Jose, parcel by parcel, building by building, from downtown to Alviso and North San Jose,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said. “That billion-dollar investment is a vote of confidence that we’re a city on the rise, with unmatched talent, room to grow, and the ambition and vision to lead the Valley’s next era of innovation.”

Lobby area of Building 7 at the Google Meadow Point...