Google has been going on a real estate shopping spree over the past few years, signaling the company is preparing to hire thousands. According to the Bay Area News Group, the search giant's development plans would allow Google to hire as many as 30,000 new employees in the coming years.

Google's glistening fleet of employee coaches will soon be tainted by the presence of Everyman. In an effort to get ahead of concerns that the search giant is growing too quickly for Mountain View, Google is funding a free shuttle network to appease their detractors.

Google has been taking heat for clogging San Francisco's housing supply with their employees. Now neighbors in their corporate hometown are grumbling that the company's $600 million real estate "shopping spree" will ruin the cozy suburb.

An anonymous Twitter user who goes by the handle @punkboyinsf posted video footage tonight that appears to show police officers arresting protestors outside Google's Mountain View headquarters. The protestors claims to be part of Occupy Google, an ill-defined group demanding net neutrality and presenting itself as a defender Internet freedom.

As part of a week-long exploration of income inequality in the midst of an economic boom, NPR has matched some faces with abstract dots on a map, demonstrating that you can work for Google and still go hungry.

The little 7o-year-old house at 353 Carmelita Drive is about as unspectacular as American real estate gets: two bedrooms, one and a half baths, and a modest 960 square feet. Elsewhere in the country (or at least the state) you could probably snatch it up for around a quarter million, tops: but in Google's back yard, it's four times that.