[Xylakant]

The building was originally renovated by ID Media, one of the largest digital media/web development companies in Berlin at the end of the nineties. It’s been filled with IT companies ever since they went bankrupt and currently has an incubator as one of the renters. It’s never been full of artists for the last 20 years.

So while I’m not surprised (and very much not sad) that the plans didn’t work out for a host of reasons I really don’t think that the campus would have led to substantial gentrification in that region.

Disclosure: we (still) have our office in the complex.

[cyphunk]

The mere mention of google already turned up into most housing and office space sale adverts. The effect on housing costs is real but the amount debatable. Rents in the neighborhood have gone through the roof the past couple years and protestors are looking for symbolic wins to make the city more urgently address the problem.

[Xylakant]

> Rents in the neighborhood have gone through the roof the past couple years

Exactly my point. The rents are on the rise with our without google. I really don't think that the victory is anything but a symbolic win. It does nothing to push the city to solve that issue.

[cyphunk]

Companies paying workers 3 to 10 times the average wage for an area adds real stress. Berlin's problems are that, and also:

+ A global shift toward freelance and remote work letting people take a risk and move to a new place.

+ The first German renaissance back toward the east after the wall fell. The older generation in the west still remember Berlin and people from Berlin in a negative light, but their children have quiet a different impression and their parents are alltohappy to buy property for them in under-priced Berlin. Additionally reunification gutted all industry in the east causing a renter exodus to larger east German cities

+ A global debt surplus and rich people everywhere looking for stable places to stash wealth with Germany's open markets an attractive destination. In some odd way financially conservative Germans think they win with this, not considering how it increases costs of all social services and thereby their tax burden as well.

Focusing on overpriced jobs is definitely only one of many places to start. Google just made it very easy that people target them first because their products are so disliked for their lack of care for privacy: post-snowden I'm not sure I know of a single service Google has switched to being e2e encrypted.