Does Alan Eustice hate Austin?
It seems like VP of
Engineering, Alan Eustice, has
backpeddled a bit on google's intent to locate an engineering office here in
Austin. This seems very strange, after Google had a barnburner in
October with Will Wynn and company. 
Well, I suppose the
fact that the economy is melting and Google is under tighter pressures to prove
revenue growth amongst their product lines, means they have to cut back new
initiatives. It's understandable from a political perspective why it may
be controversial locating a company in Austin, when your company grew up in the
Silicon Valley.
From a cost
perspective, however, I don't know what Google is thinking.
All you have to do is to do a google
search, and compare the cost of living.
Austin is 59% cheaper than Palo Alto. Housing is the biggest factor in the cost of living difference.
Housing is 77% cheaper in Austin.
Here's how bestplaces.net rates them:
| Cost of Living Indexes | Palo Alto | Austin |
| Overall | 234 | 96 |
| Food | 118 | 87 |
| Housing | 437 | 97 |
| Utilities | 127 | 90 |
| Transportation | 124 | 95 |
| Health | 156 | 107 |
| Miscellaneous | 108 | 102 |
This also applies to a business' fixed costs!
Well, at least we still have the super secret microsoft office...
Comments (0)
Posted 10 months ago
by Luis Paez
