As one of the founders of a new IT start-up in London I can certainly assure everyone that London again has a lot that's positive for creating new companies here.<p>But this thriving climate of innovation, creativity and new companies is mostly created by those who are part of that group. It's the people in these IT companies, the large group of creative agencies long established in London and those around these groups, those who create things and less by politics or underlying infrastructure. This in itself can be seen as good, but also as endangered when you look at longer term agendas and recent actions by UK politics.<p>Our biggest concerns currently are actually the stands of UK politics on ACTA, PIPA, their implementations and European counterparts. Instead of "cruising with the flow" the UK should - like with the financial industry - take up this opportunity and safeguard this newly growing and fast driving IT industry and foster its potential by laws that allow for innovation.<p>One should not forget those who create new innovative solutions - in particular with disruptive solutions - will always be considered as enemies or someone to "lobby against" by those established players who have stopped innovating (or innovating themselves).<p>Innovation always also means overstepping lines and creating new things by throwing out established assumptions. Over time those become the hurdles the next generations of innovators have to overcome.<p>We are looking forward to see some of the promises made by UK politicians with regards to London as a tech-hub actually being enacted and this group of young companies protected against malevolent attempts to stifle that growth by established influential(mostly Non-UK)companies that seemingly still continue to believe that their business models from the last century that are sometimes closer to extortion than doing actual business are sustainable by just "paying the right people".<p>We actually have to come back to a climate and understanding in politics that values the creation of new things similar to the times when the UK was the foremost industrialised nation - and this is quite a while ago.<p>In completely unrelated news ;-) did you know that you have to wait up to six weeks in London to get a new telephone line (re)-connected thanks to the years of driving up "Shareholder value" with BT (and less spending on engineering or reducing engineering staff by thousands).
If I was a person from outside of the UK and looking to setup a business in the UK I would absolutely not choose London as my base! I understand all of the reasons in favour of London but I think there are better alternatives. London is full of the type of people who like to make a lot of noise but get little done, costs are extortionate and you can get most of the benefit of London from outside.<p>My personal choices would be a city along one of the major rail routes into London or one of the major University cities. So they would be Bath, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge and perhaps Birmingham / Warwick. In fact most of these cities have their own start up friendly environments that are linked with the universities and plenty of VC and PE firms in those cities. All of which are less expensive and much more welcoming and friendly places to be, less ego too!
The title is a bit misleading. The campus is not "for Google", but rather a space for start-ups. Only the building is owned by Google.<p>On a side note, the bear looks like one of the United Buddy Bears from the original Berlin collection. I'm not entirely sure how they got one, but it's an awesome thing to have around. Clearly it's being put to good use, given the Tardis decorating its arm :)
The current 'London' Situation is starting to annoy alot of people. The Olympics is a classic example of an event that is for the entire UK but most of the north (inc. Scotland) and west (including Wales and Ireland off the coast of England) will not benefit. Take a look at this image of a map of the events:<p><a href="http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/395/olym.png" rel="nofollow">http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/395/olym.png</a><p>The UK has one of the largest number of Football Clubs in the world. Every Major City and Town has a Football Club and the smaller towns have Rugby Stadiums. Some cities have BOTH. Leicester, for example, has The Tigers Rugby Statium a stones throw from the King Power Football Stadium.<p>Why are these cities not benefiting from such a hugh event and why is the Govenment not investing in the creation of Tech Campus's in all major cities in the UK?
Mozilla recently opened a London office, too:<p><a href="http://thenextweb.com/uk/2012/03/23/a-look-inside-mozillas-new-london-co-working-space/" rel="nofollow">http://thenextweb.com/uk/2012/03/23/a-look-inside-mozillas-n...</a><p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/codepo8/sets/72157629224696636/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/codepo8/sets/72157629224696636/</a>
If Europe, in particular the UK, can pass more anti-copyright and tech-friendly laws, wouldn't it be a no-brainer for most startups/companies to move there?