[ebog]

Would you rather people, jobs, and an economic powerhouse of an industry move away or just build more housing? It's not like the software industry is a monolith, it's a collection of people and companies who have decided the network effect of moving to a high cost place with a lot of engineering talent is better than the alternatives. It's hard to move that inertia somewhere else.

Then there's the serious question of where would the industry go? So many cities are so NIMBY controlled in this country (although SF is up there with the worst) that not many places are better.

[falcolas]

If the city can't (or won't) support the company, yes, the company should move. The city can make decisions from there, instead of assuming that the companies will be there regardless of the city's actions.

There's a lot of cities throughout the US (even a few within easy driving distance of SF) who would love to house Google.

[ebog]

Presumably Google still has a massive Bay Area presence because it's more profitable for them to stay there than move, at least that's what is implied. Maybe they should be pushing hard for the city to build more housing. But it seems like the current residents in that area are holding their hands to their ears, closing their eyes and shouting away any evidence that more people require more housing, or things will get worse. I can see your point that Google should probably move if that's the case, but the costs involved probably make it super unrealistic for that to happen, at least in the near future.

Where would you move Google, at this point, if you were in charge? There's not a single city -- in the US, at least -- that I can think of that would be prepared, with the right infrastructure or ready to build out a lot more. That probably factors into Google's decision making process as well.

Maybe we should be going back to the idea of company towns. Or possibly have urban planners building new cities from the ground up with proper infrastructure, housing, transportation, etc. that have the ability to expand for new residents and companies. Certainly the big cities in the US don't have that capability due to our car based infrastructure and our attraction to 30 year mortgages on suburban houses.