Barge On San Francisco Bay Being Built As A Marketing Showcase For Google Glass

So there’s this mysterious barge parked in San Francisco Bay, stacked with shipping containers. It was a known fact that the barge belonged to Google, but nobody knew what it was doing there, what was on it, or what it might be used for, but local TV station KPIX says it’s cracked it: The barge will be a floating Google Glass showroom, and the whole thing was a project by Google[x], the search giant’s secretive idea incubator and lab.

More specifically, it will be a series of showrooms, and although Google Glass will be among the prominent tech displayed, it won’t be the only one. You probably won’t ever see the inside of it, though; the showrooms are invitation-only.

Google barge Google Glass showroom
Credits: Stephen Lam/Reuters, above; KPIX/CBS, inset

Google cofounder Sergey Brin himself reportedly is personally directing the project. The design is as fascinating as it is simple: There are three decks of showrooms and a top “party deck”, and everything is constructed from 40 shipping containers. Thus, the building is modular, and pieces can be (relatively easily) added and subtracted at will and moved to other locations.

There’s reportedly a similar barge being constructed off the coast of Portland, Maine.