5 Shiny Reasons Google Should Take Over Ford’s Twin Cities Auto Plant

Mar 8, 2007 at 1:56pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Ed Kohler makes a pitch for Google to come to St. Paul, Minnesota — and it’s both a fun and compelling one. He points out that Ford is abandoning its Twin Cities Assembly Plant that comes complete with its own hydro-electric power station, handy for power-hungry (that’s electric power I’m talking about) Google. But frankly, I think Larry and Sergey would find the underground tunnels a sweet enough reason to grab the giant area smack in the middle of the Twin Cities. The five coolest reasons from his pitch:

Power Plant: 100 million kilowatts of energy per year from the included hydro-electric dam.
Train Yard: Sure, Ed thinks Google could use it for moving portable data centers around. But I could see Google’s cofounders deciding they need a private Google Train to go with their Google Jet. Hook it up to the hydro dam, and you’ve got the world’s biggest electric train set.
Parking: Currently used to store the Ford Rangers built at the plant, which is supposed to close next year. There’s so much of it that Google employees would never have parking problems like those at Yahoo.
Easy Airport Access: The international airport is nearby, handy for private jet landings or for regular Googlers slumming it on the airlines.
Tunnels: I mean really big ones, like you could race non-environmentally friendly 4×4s in them. Or boats. Or both. At the same time.

Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

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mstoddart, March 8th, 2007 at 2:15 pm ET:

6. Assembly Plant: It’s only a matter of time before Google is manufacturing automobiles anyway.

Ross Dunn, March 8th, 2007 at 3:10 pm ET:

Thanks for the grin Danny! Who needs Disneyland when we could have Googleland?! My mind is a-whirl imagining the cool theme rides they could have at a lot like that :-)

katethomas, March 8th, 2007 at 10:49 pm ET:

Reason #6: The food and belly dancing at Caravan Serai, an Afghanistani restaurant across from the Ford plant. Just a camel spit away…

NunoH, March 9th, 2007 at 4:22 am ET:

Damn…

5 Shiny Reasons Google Should Take Over Ford’s Twin Cities Auto Plant

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