14 DAY TRIAL // A 432-acre former campus belonging to Sun Microsystems has been the topic on most of Denver's business savvy people's lips in the weekend. It was bought by someone, but the details were kept so secretive that not even the Associated Press could find out who it was. "We don't even know it is a tech company," Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., told the cited source. "It could be a tech company, but it could also be a financial services company or an energy company. Who knows?"
There are several good reasons to believe that the Mountain View-based company is behind the deal, all written down by Search Engine Land's Chris Sherman: first of all, the area is just four miles from Level 3 Communications, operating one of the largest communications and Internet backbones in the entire world. Second in line is something more close and personal, as Google's CEO was at one time the CTO of Sun Microsystems and he held that office for years.
It's a very good area, perfect for Google: it's even located on streets predestined for such an Internet-based company, such as Tape Drive and Disc Drive. Furthermore, it is only three miles from a major regional airport. Add the pieces together and you get the reason why the Great Search Engine would be interested in it.
Asked to comment by Sherman, Google replied in the voice of spokeswoman Katie Watson: "While I cannot comment on a specific property, the Colorado area is significant to Google as we have many users, employees, advertisers and publishers there, and it is a base for recruiting. We will always seek to acquire space as necessary to meet our needs." My guess is that if they're thinking about opening the biggest server farm in the world, they'll be expanding, so yeah, they need this.