An Hour at the Google Store, and Why I’ve Never Quite Fallen for the Company
Andrea and I had about an hour to kill between Half Moon Bay and the East Bay, where we were headed to pick up my cousin before continuing on to Stockton. On a last-minute whim, we detoured to the Google Visitor Experience in Mountain View, a place I had heard about for years but had never actually visited.
It is a little strange that I have never become a big Google fan. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were at Stanford at the same time I was. My CS106A section leader—the only computer science class I ever took—was Marissa Mayer, who would go on to become Google’s twentieth employee, shape the famously uncluttered look of the Google search homepage, and much later become CEO of Yahoo.
Like most people on the planet, I have used Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, AdSense (for a few years, before I decided I did not want ads plastered across my personal website), Google Translate, and of course YouTube.
But for whatever reason, I have usually gravitated toward Google’s competitors. Until AI chatbots came along, I preferred Bing search for a decade. I have stuck with Microsoft Office and, more recently, Apple iWork over Google Workspace. Apple Maps over Google Maps. Apple Mail over Gmail. These days, Claude over Gemini. I cannot quite explain why I have never fallen for this company, despite its famous code-of-conduct line, “Don’t be evil.”
The visitor complex itself has a proper name I only learned once I started digging: the Google Visitor Experience, part of Google’s Gradient Canopy campus in Mountain View. Tucked under that umbrella are several distinct spots, including the Google Store, Café @ Mountain View, a community event space called The Huddle, a rotating Pop-Up Shop for local makers, and an outdoor Plaza with public art.
I parked myself next to one of the campus’s colorful shared bikes for a photo, feeling a little like a tourist posing with a prop, which, in fairness, I was.
Inside the Google Store, my first impression was that the Google Store is not quite the Apple Store—but the hardware gave it a fair fight. The design language throughout was unmistakably influenced by Apple, right down to the clean tables and the way each device sat spotlighted like a museum piece.
The Pixel phones looked genuinely premium up close. The newest Pixel 10a has done away with the camera bump entirely, leaving the back of the phone completely flat—a small detail, but one that made the display models look tidier sitting on the table than any bumped-and-bulged flagship I have handled recently.
A few steps over, the Pixel Watches were arranged in a neat row, their round faces and colorful bands looking like distant cousins of the Apple Watch, if perhaps a bit more willing to wear bright colors to a dinner party.
The Nest lineup—cameras, thermostats, the works—had that same premium finish. The Nest Wifi Pro units were displayed out in the open, apparently meant to look at home on a shelf rather than hidden in a closet. I will grant that it looked fine, though “squared-off egg” was the phrase that came to mind before “design icon.”
There was a modest amount of memorabilia scattered around the store, including merchandise themed after the pixelated dinosaur from Chrome’s “No internet connection” game, an odd but oddly perfect artifact to sell as a T-shirt.
A miniature scale model of the campus bikes sat near the register, the kind of tchotchke that exists purely so you remember, three weeks later, that you were in fact at Google and not dreaming it.
A café sat adjoining the store, the kind of spot that serves local, seasonal food and drinks to whoever wanders in off the plaza. Unfortunately for us, it was closing up for the day right as we arrived, so lunch would have to wait for Stockton.
We drove a loop through the broader campus afterward. Andrea remarked that it looked like a nice, peaceful place to work, all landscaped paths and low, glassy buildings. I noticed that most of the office parking lots were nearly empty at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday. Good to know that Google employees are not chained to their desks every night of the week.
By the time we pulled back onto the highway toward Stockton, I still could not tell you exactly why I have never fallen head over heels for Google, the way I have for other companies whose products fill my backpack and my desk. It might have something to do with the Google Graveyard, their total search monopoly, or their wholesale rip-off of the iPhone, I’m not sure.
But I will say this: whoever is designing their hardware and their stores has been doing trying hard to keep up with Cupertino, and the visit was a pleasant, unplanned hour well spent.
