Google has taken out a lease on 40,000 square feet of office space at 123 Buckingham Palace Road in Victoria. The internet company is paying £65 per square foot for the prestigious new location. This would mean its yearly rent would come to £10.4 million.
Read our Guide to Renting an Office in Victoria
Both Sony and Facebook had also been interested in the space, it was rumoured. Among Google’s new neighbours in the building designed by famed Italian architect Renzo Piano will be TV outfit NBC Universal.
Matt Brittin, Google’s UK manager, said Google would design its new office “in the Google style.”
He added that the acquisition was “all part of our continued investment in our UK operations, and we’re hiring rapidly across all our teams.”
The deal is currently among the biggest to take place in London so far this year.
Recently, Google has also leased more land in Mountain View, the Californian town where its headquarters are located.
It intends to add buildings to the famous ‘Googleplex’, the name of its sprawling campus.
The Googleplex has a multitude of cafeterias, a gym, a laundry room, a games room, and multiple lounges where employees can relax.
Recently Google announced that it would fight the US government’s plans to instil tough new anti-piracy measures on the internet.
Eric Schmidt, the company’s executive chairman, said on Wednesday that such measures would harm freedom of speech.
He said: “If there is a law that requires DNSs [domain name systems, the protocol that allows users to connect to websites] to do X and it’s passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it, then we would still fight it.
“If it’s a request, the answer is we wouldn’t do it; if it’s a discussion, we wouldn’t do it.”
Editor’s notes: The office building in Victoria is popular with many companies that rent space there. There is also a WeWork Space at 123 Buckingham Palace Road that offers agile alternatives to office leasing.
The international flex space provider offers move-in-ready, lockable private offices for teams of all sizes, dedicated desks in shared offices, hot desks in coworking spaces, and meeting rooms for hire.
In March 2026, Google announced 4,000 staff would start moving into its Kings Cross HQ, named Platform 37, in Summer 2026, 10 years after it was originally scheduled to be completed.
The building is 330 metres long, making it longer than The Shard is tall. The AI-focused UK headquarters is located next to King’s Cross Station and comprises approximately 1 million square feet of space. As it is just 11 storeys tall, at 72 metres, it has been dubbed a Landscraper.
Features include a landscaped rooftop garden, fully electric kitchens, real-time energy tracking, and a network of 13,500 interconnected Internet of Things (IoT) devices that optimise energy efficiency and solar shading.