[alistairSH]

Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC.

Google has 2 (or 3?) offices in DC metro. One is on Mass Ave, in the heart of downtown. The 2nd is in Reston, which is suburban (20 miles out of downtown) but is accessible via rail and a 10 minute drive to IAD.

They might have an office in Sterling/Ashburn, but I think that's a data center, so not a huge employment center.

[rayiner]

At least as of several years ago, the Reston office was bigger, right? I got the impression that the DC office had more corporate folks while the Reston office is where most of the engineers are.

The Reston office is not accessible by rail. The Reston Town Center silver line station will open sometime this year or next. And even then, it’ll be largely inaccessible by rail to people who actually live in Reston, since the only place the silver line goes is toward DC at one end and toward IAD at the other. From Sterling it’s a 15 minute drive, but an hour and 15 minute trip involving multiple buses. And if you live in one of the Virginia suburbs like Vienna, you can take the train to Reston Town Center, but you have to go in the opposite direction toward DC first on the orange and then switch at Ballston to a silver going back out. 45 minutes or so, versus a 20 minute drive.

[alistairSH]

I'm not sure about the sizes. I don't think either is a large office.

And you're correct that if you don't live on the rail, nothing is rail accessible. And even if you do, it's hub/spoke, so only useful for going downtown or to IAD, there's no matrix of lines to get from Tysons to Bethesda or similar without going downtown and transferring first.

That said, I think Google is opening a new office at Reston Station (Wiehle Road), which is currently accessible by rail. I don't know if this is an additional office, or if they're moving/expanding the RTC office.

I'm so glad I live and work in Reston, walk to work, and can mostly ignore this stuff. Except for when the weather turns to crap - then I have to deal with traffic on Sunrise and Reston Parkway with everybody else (and it's only getting worse as developers turn all the parking lots into new high-rise developments). I wish Fairfax County's bike lane implementation wasn't so half-assed - many of the areas could be bike-accessible in reasonable time frames (my old Herndon-Fairfax commute was 30 min by car or 45 by bike and saved me working out some other time).