Mountain View Offices Bought by Google for $33 Million

Google is joining Apple and Nvidia in buying buildings it leases in Silicon Valley.

Mountain View-based Google bought a 22,000-square-foot building at 1808 Shoreline Boulevard for $32.8 million, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported. The seller was Morris Associates XI, a subsidiary of local developer Jeffrey A. Morris Group.

In 2023, Jeffrey A. Morris Group started the process of revamping the office to create a bigger corporate complex, which included upping the Shoreline Boulevard building’s size from one story to six, adding more than 80,000 square feet of offices to the property. The city of Mountain View approved Jeffrey A. Morris Group’s plan, though the firm never followed through with redeveloping the building.

The purchase comes the same week the tech giant offloaded another property in Sunnyvale. Planetary Ventures, a joint venture between Google and the California Air National Guard sold the building at 494 South Bernardo Avenue to 494 Bernardo LP, a subsidiary of Palo Alto-based The Mozart Development Company.

The building is located in a neighborhood where Google once committed to building 7,000 residential units and 360 commercial-use condominiums as part of its North Bayshore development plan; it was approved for those plans in 2023, but backed away from them as part of its wider retreat from real estate development. In May, Google sought to sell 40 acres in Mountain View where it previously planned to build 1,900 homes, 380 affordable housing units, 50,000 square feet of retail space and 1.3 million square feet of offices in a mixed-use development known as Middlefield Park.

Google’s building purchase follows similar moves by Nvidia and Apple this year to buy buildings they lease for offices.

In September, Nvidia added to its office holdings with the purchase of 2701 San Tomas Expressway in Santa Clara from Sobrato for $83.2 million, part of a four-building complex. In May, Nvidia purchased three other buildings in the Santa Clara office complex from Sobrato in May for $254 million.

Over the summer, Apple bought a three-building, 220,700-square-foot property at 10200 North Tantau Avenue in Cupertino, for more than $166.9 million in an all-cash deal from PGIM, followed by the acquisition of Kilroy Realty’s four-building Mathilda Campus in Sunnyvale for $365 million. — Chris Malone Méndez