Google has built a massive business organizing the world's information but it's having a lot of trouble keeping track of its own bicycles.
Google maintains roughly 1,100 free bicycles known as Gbikes (does the name surprise you?) for its employees to get around on its sprawling Googleplex Campus Headquarters in Mountain View, California. (As you read this Blog Posting, remember this underlined part.)
However, Google's bikes consistently go missing from its campus. The company estimates that between 100 and 250 a week leave the campus for parts unknown.
Among the solutions, the company hired a team of 30 contractors and five designated vans whose only job is to retrieve Gbikes from around the community.
Some bikes are simply stolen. Other bikes have shown up throughout the town at local schools, on neighbors' lawns, at the bottom of the town creek, on the roof of O'Malley's Sports Pub and at outside local movie theatre where the Town Mayor left it.
One 68 year old unauthorized user who rides the bikes several times a week says, "It's like a friendly gesture. They don't really want us to use it, but it's OK if you do." (The Fella does not want to sound picky but did she just contradict herself?) When a bike is available at the train station she rides it 10 minutes to her house and keeps it overnight behind her gate. The next morning, she rides it back to the station, where she catches the train to her job at Google’s rival Oracle Corp. She was quoted as saying, "I rent it for a day". (Now the Fella is wondering how Google chooses to spend the “rent” proceeds.)
Still, Google is trying to slow the losses. Late last year, it started adding GPS trackers to the bikes, which revealed thieves were taking them as far as Mexico, Fairbanks, the snows of New England and the Nevada desert.
One of the Google employees charged with retrieving the bikes (a full time job) started carrying a lock to secure bikes he finds around town. When he tries that in front of his family, they reprimand him because they say he’s going to leave somebody stranded.
When an elderly person who was spotted with one was asked what he planned to do with it, he said, “Oh, I've got a whole garage full of them”.
Send in the Lawyers…Gbikes (up to $300 purchase price, repair, replacement, retrieval) are costing Google a lot of money. The Fella is wondering, if Google decided to scrap the whole idea, would the Thieves, the Town People, the Town Mayor, the People Employed to Retrieve Them, the Mexicans, the Alaskans, the New Englanders and Desert People in Nevada sue Google.
Would I kid u?
Smartfella
