You'll Never Have To Leave Facebook's New Campus If You Work There

On Friday, Facebook revealed its plans to build a new 59-acre campus across the street from its current headquarters in Menlo Park, CA.

The description of the new office, dubbed “Willow Campus,” sounds like a nearly complete town: It'll have apartments, local transportation, multiple parks, office space, a grocery store, and a pharmacy.

In addition to 1.75 million square feet of office space, there will be 1.6 million square feet of residential space and 125,000 square feet of retail and mixed-use space. Maybe you'll never leave if you work there? Maybe your manager will be your landlord?

Facebook said there will be 1,500 units of housing on the campus, 225 of which will be offered at below market rates, something the Bay Area desperately needs. The company said the residential housing will be for “local workers” as well as Facebook employees.

In its blog post, Facebook said its office park would bring “long-needed community services” to its home city. It also decried local government's “failure to invest in transportation infrastructure.” The company emphasized its own investment in local highway infrastructure and an affordable housing fund as efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of its growing business.

Facebook HQ — 430,000 square feet of office space designed by famed architect Frank Gehry — opened in Menlo Park in 2011. It's called MPK20. There's currently no housing there, according to a Facebook spokesperson.

The social network is positioning the plans as a big boon for its neighbors.

It published a video “Facebook and the Community” in the announcement and titled its blog post “Investing in Menlo Park and the Community.”

View Video ›

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Here are a few views of the new Facebook campus' planned layout:

Here’s where the train and bus station will be.

There will be seven parks in total, according to Facebook:

Facebook said it hopes to finish the retail, housing, and office space by 2021. And that's just Phase 1 of the development.

The company said the first step towards the campus will be submitting its plans to the city of Menlo Park this month. In its blog post about the new plans, Facebook said it expects the review process to take about two years.

Quelle: <a href="You'll Never Have To Leave Facebook's New Campus If You Work There“>BuzzFeed

Waymo Drops Nearly All Of Its Patent Claims In Self-Driving Lawsuit Against Uber

ANGELO MERENDINO/AFP / Getty Images

Waymo has dropped many of its patent infringement claims in its self-driving lawsuit against the ride-hail giant Uber. The move, which both parties agreed to, narrows the case as it heads toward an October trial date.

The claims addressed a LiDAR device that Uber had designed, nicknamed the Spider. LiDAR, which stands for light ranging and detection, is a laser technology that helps self-driving cars see and navigate the world. Uber's Spider device is now defunct and never evolved beyond the design phase into a prototype, so Waymo has agreed to drop the related patent claims after US District Judge William Alsup directed both parties to narrow their cases ahead of a trial.

“Uber has assured the court in statements made under penalty of perjury that it no longer uses and will not use that device, so we have narrowed the issues for trial by dismissing the patent claims as to that device, with the right to re-file suit if needed,” a Waymo spokesman said in a statement. “We continue to pursue a patent claim against Uber's current generation device and our trade secret claims, which are not at all affected by this stipulated dismissal. We look forward to trial.”

US District Judge William Alsup asked Waymo in June whether the company thought its patent claims against Uber were worth the time in court. “In my view, they're not … you're wasting time,” he said.

Waymo initially said that Uber stole more than 100 of its trade secrets. The judge told the company to narrow its case to just 10 claims for a focused trial, which is slated for October 10. The move to narrow the case by dropping some claims is not necessarily an indication that Waymo is losing footing – it just means that the court will hear a more streamlined set of each side's strongest arguments.

Waymo's lawsuit against Uber alleges that Anthony Levandowski, its former employee who decamped and later joined Uber, downloaded more than 14,000 files before leaving Waymo. It is arguing that Uber, which acquired Levandowski's self-driving truck startup last summer, is benefitting from those trade secrets.

Alsup, the judge presiding over the case, said in May that Waymo information may have “seeped” into Uber's designs. As part of discovery, Waymo lawyers have visited Uber facilities at least eight times and for a total of more than 50 hours. Still, Alsup told Waymo in a June 29 court proceeding that “you have been given access to everything in the world … you're having an extremely hard time finding that any of your trade secrets got into their product.”

“Waymo's retreat on three of their four patent claims is yet another sign that they have overpromised and can't deliver. Not only have they uncovered zero evidence of any of the 14,000 files in question coming to Uber, they now admit that Uber's LiDAR design is actually very different than theirs,” an Uber spokesman said in a statement. “Faced with this hard truth, Waymo has resorted to floating conspiracy theories not rooted in fact, doing everything they can to put the focus on sensation rather than substance.”

Quelle: <a href="Waymo Drops Nearly All Of Its Patent Claims In Self-Driving Lawsuit Against Uber“>BuzzFeed