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Down in the Valley

  • Darren Waters
  • 5 Mar 07, 04:16 PM

"This is CalTrain 12 your baby bullet."

I'm down in Silicon Valley, riding the rails to meet some firms that are instrumental to how we live our digital lives now, and in the future.

The first stop is Mountain View, and at first glance it appears to be a sleepy town with a quaint railway station, clad with clapper boards and a main street of one-storey shops, restaurants and cafes.

But there's something different about this place; you can see it the age of the people descending from the trains. Most seem to be mid 20s, clutching Crumpler or Timbuktu laptop bags.
There is also a host of shuttle buses waiting to take people to offices, idling in the car park.

You can feel the difference too in the coffee shops, all of which seem to offer free wireless (Britain: take note).

Like many of the stops along the CalTrain route - Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Sunny Vale - Mountain View has a resonance with technology lovers.

This town is home to Google, Mozilla, Sun Microsystems, Adobe and a host of other tech firms, big and small.

It's the first two companies I'm interested in because I'm meeting with them today, meeting Google's open source lead Chris DiBona and Mozilla's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer and Chris Beard, the vp of products.

Silicon Valley has changed enormously in the 36 years since the term was first used to describe this corridor of towns south of San Francisco to San Jose.

The term was created by journalist Don Hoefler in 1971, who spotted the proliferation of chip firms in the area. Now of course the term refers to all hi-tech activity and not just microprocessor production.

More recently Silicon Valley has seen the rise and fall and rise again of web firms, of which Google is the greatest success story.

I'll also be visiting some of the smaller players such as Meebo, the web instant messaging firm, as part of a series looking at some of the bright young things in the web space.

But there are so many bright young things here in Mountain View I could probably pull up a chair next to anyone in any coffee house here in Mountain View and get deep into conversation about web standards, dotcom 2.0 and XML.

It's going to be an interesting day in the valley.

Comments   Post your comment

Did you know that Google wired the entire town of Mountain View with WiFi? And it's all FREE to the residents of this wonderful little town. Yup, F-R-E-E!

Plus, don't forget SGI and the movie industry.

I've lived here for 25 years and it's the best place in the bay area as far as I'm concerned.

Add the high tech coupled with the High Tech museum, a hub for CalTrain and Light Rail, and one of the best outdoor concert venues in Shoreline Amphitheatre, and you will see why it's an absolutely winning place to live in Silicon Valley.

We have had a great run of luck with fantastic members on the City Council. Over the years, Mountain View has evolved from a town that was a stage coach stop with bordellos and saloons to the mecca for innovation that it is today.

  • 2.
  • At 09:52 PM on 05 Mar 2007,
  • Cornell wrote:

Hi,

If you are visiting Google visit Network Appliance, close to Google on 465 Java Drive. Here it isn't content but managing content (STORAGE). Many great movies were mastered on NetApp Storage, Lord of the Rings for example.
They have a great story to tell.

www.netapp.com . Yes I do work for them, in Holland, not in the US and I am enthousiastic. Its a great story.


Cornell


I was in Mountain View last summer visiting a fellow programming friend. The thing that I love about that place is that the streets are so clean. It is rare that you ever see a piece of litter. Also, you feel so safe there, everyone seems so professional and educated. I'd love to live over there but it is tricky to get a work permit and the price of property is astronomical.

  • 4.
  • At 10:48 PM on 05 Mar 2007,
  • Dean wrote:

Head on down to Milpitas and you'll find a thriving town, home to such big names as Cisco Systems, Maxtor, TDK-Headway and Advanced Energy, to name but a few.

As a process engineer, in the semiconductor industry, I have spent many, many months there over the last seven years and have always been welcomed by the locals (especially at the bar, at Ranch Drive Applebee's.....).

  • 5.
  • At 01:12 AM on 06 Mar 2007,
  • G. Smiley wrote:

Things have slowed down here in the last several years. About a third of the commercial buildings are vacant or have been torn down and replaced by shops and housing.

Graduate degrees are so common that no one pays any attention to them. You never hear anyone addressed as Dr in public.

  • 6.
  • At 04:34 AM on 06 Mar 2007,
  • Jessica wrote:

The name of the town is Sunnyvale but otherwise thanks for the nice things you're saying about the Silicon Valley. : D

  • 7.
  • At 05:01 AM on 06 Mar 2007,
  • d wrote:

Mountain View is an extremely dull place. The whole valley in fact. Ok if you want to sit in front of a computer all day.

  • 8.
  • At 07:23 AM on 06 Mar 2007,
  • Joanne wrote:

San Francisco is in the midst of deciding who we are going to let provide free wireless to the whole City. Google will probably get it, but who knows. It will be so nice to take the laptop to the park, and do what ever I have to do, or want to do.

  • 9.
  • At 08:36 AM on 06 Mar 2007,
  • Ian Kemmish wrote:

The people you meet in the coffee houses are the blaggers looking for investment. The coding serfs are the ones scurrying across the lobby at Sun et al., still attempting to eat their morning bowl of cereal....

It's a good place to go to trade shows because any decent prospects can arrange a meeting with real, knowledgeable people within a few hours, but to live and work, give me Blighty any day!

  • 10.
  • At 08:46 AM on 06 Mar 2007,
  • wrote:

You've just got to love the Valley - I've been going back and forth from Europe, for the past 12 years and it's still head and shoulders above anywhere else for proliferating IT dreams. If you've time in your schedule, and you're heading past Fremont feel free to pop into our head office for a chat with our guys !

  • 11.
  • At 06:00 PM on 07 Mar 2007,
  • peter wrote:

Hint for Brits: instead of funding obsolete royalty, spend on getting ordinary citizens free wireless access in your cities
PEter
Cal

  • 12.
  • At 06:27 PM on 09 Mar 2007,
  • Tim Dennell wrote:

Just to say a 大象传媒 blog sing a Google mash up and linking to a photoset in Flickr. Yowza! Can we have more of this please, and not just in the tech blogs. (Could you do a photoset of images sent by citizens after a big event, with a map marking location for example?)

  • 13.
  • At 07:26 PM on 09 Mar 2007,
  • Ian wrote:

Interesting comment on the city council in Mountain View....these guys would build on a piece of land the size of a postage stamp if they could.

Pre election they were the wost city council on the peninsula.
Pear,Neely etc...
MV is nice ,but nothing compared to the tree lined streets of Palo Alto.

  • 14.
  • At 10:44 PM on 09 Mar 2007,
  • leisette wrote:

this is a fabulous story! glad you are having a great trip. thank you for putting this together, would love to see more stories like this on cities and unique things about them. enjoy MV. it's got some of the best cafes in northern california....WIFI!!

  • 15.
  • At 12:32 AM on 10 Mar 2007,
  • Elizabeth II wrote:

Hint for Brits: As others have noted, Mountain View looks clean and inviting to nerds, but it's void of culture or "happening" stuff. We'll take our royalty over some free WiFi.

Liz, Berkeley, CA.

  • 16.
  • At 08:11 AM on 10 Mar 2007,
  • Tom wrote:

Did you know that Google wired the entire town of Mountain View with WiFi?

Wiring Wireless?

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