It will surprise no one that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Salesforce and Airbnb are thought of as platforms.
Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Uber and AirBnB are consumer platforms, while Salesforce and Microsoft are business platforms.
Tech platforms are coming under increasing scrutiny due to their scale, speed and control of data – Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to highlight the most obvious.
What we may be less conscious of is how the rise of these tech platforms in the Bay Area are reshaping our cities.
What follows is a snapshot of the workforce and workplace footprints of largest of these tech empires and their planned growth.
As these empire-building enterprises have expanded they have turned old industrial land into sprawling offices and filled new skyscrapers.
But their next phase of real estate growth will be even more transformative, as these companies plan to double the their footprint in the next 10 to 15 years.
Alphabet, Apple, Facebook and Amazon today occupy more than 40m sq ft of offices in the region.
By 2030, that could reach more than 50m sq ft, with the space accommodating more than 100,000 new employees.
