Microsoft to Open Mall on Company Campus
Apparently Microsoft is all set to open a mini-mall to go along with that employee-only pub they’re launching.
The Guardian today reports that Microsoft is planning to open a retail complex in its Redmond campus. Microsoft employees will have access to 14 restaurants, the aforementioned pub and a spinoff of Pike Place Market, complete with a miniature version of the red neon clock, hunks of Beecher's cheese, jars of pepper jelly and Chukar cherries. The 106,000-square-foot building also boasts a post office, a credit union, a bicycle-repair shop and several cell phone stores, along with a conference centre can hold up to 1,000 people.
"We've got a daytime population of over 50,000 people, so when you're looking at that size of congregation of people, you start thinking about the things they need in their daily lives," said Chris Owens, general manager of worldwide real estate at Microsoft.
The Guardian cites Hrvoje Benko, a researcher on interactive touch technology at Microsoft research as saying he was most excited about the soccer field because the fields on main campus were often booked.
Microsoft says it cut down on costs and budgeted throughout the production of the facility. Owens told the Guardian, "We haven't gold plated anything in that facility," and went on to say that the opening would be fairly low-key and Bruce Springsteen free.
Click here for more.
- Tiger Woods Wii to Pack MotionPlus
- Sony Calls PSP Piracy "Sickening"
- Hackers Paying $32K for Obsolete Nokias
- Upgrade Your Warner HD DVDs to Blu-ray for $5
- Dept. of Defense Making Anti-smoking Game
- Rock Band Getting LEGO-lized
- AT&T Doubling 3G Speeds; Stability Questionable
- Stephen Hawking Expected to Make Full Recovery
- More Blu-ray Players to Hit $99 This Holiday
- Apple Apologizes for Baby Shaker Incident
- Obama's Super Secure Blackberry Nearly Ready
- Dreamcasts Sold New at $99 Quickly Sell Out
- Apple Cuts 1,600 Retail Workers, Kinda
- F-Secure Says Stop Using Acrobat Reader
- Samsung Unveils Phone Running Google Android
- Apple in Talks With Verizon for iPhone? Not Likely
- KBB's Top Ten Greenest Cars Mostly Hybrids
- Apple found Guilty of Patent Infringement
- Smells: The Next Level in Gaming
I am getting the impression that no one works there, and all they do is shop and drink. Boy, I'd like to work there
Thats smart, people make their money at Microsoft and spend it at Microsoft, making it potentially possible to make a profit off of its own employee's.
Okay
again
I don't work there.....and as AL Bundy once said.
Don't know; Don't care!
hrm...
soon there will be Microsoft, WA on all your maps.
OMFG MICROSOFT IS TAKING OVERS LOLOLOL I WILL HAVE WINDOWS INSTALLED IN MY COFFEE!!!
Chuck Norris invented employment and make money off of there employee's
Apple store is one of the store in the mall
you guys (^) sound like a bunch of retards.
the microsoft area has 50,000 people, they want to make things easier for their employees. Obviously its not going to rip off the employees, microsoft treats their employees very nicely.
Apple store is one of the store in the mall
lol!
Seemsnot very plausible,seeing that bill gates didn't even allow his kids to have an iphone (or something)..
It's everyone else they rip off lol
I guess they've trumphed our cafeteria manned with just 7 people
Anyway, I wonder if the cell phone shops sell iphones and psp's?
Thats smart, people make their money at Microsoft and spend it at Microsoft, making it potentially possible to make a profit off of its own employee's.
Yeah that's what i was thinking. It probably doesn't cost them much in the end.
Very smart.
So when do the Microsoft apartment buildings start showing up? Or will they just start installing cots in the cubes to make it more convenient to be a Microsoft employee - taking away any and all reason to leave the campus. Microsoft is making a little Microcommunity. If I were the government, I would start planting spies within their ranks to find the hacker training camps I know that they have.
With a daytime population of 50,000 people, that's more than many small towns. Clearly Microsoft is creating some sort of ecosystem, or maybe someone is just playing Sim City.
They should build that dome thing you could build in sim sity 2000 then ... the thing that looks like a big wine glass in gray with a transparent lid and trees and stuff in .... that housed up to 45K pop far as I remember ... That'd probably beat that huge japanese lcd screen for memorability
But will it have an apple store?