Pages

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Mountain View, California

Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It is named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The city shares its borders with the cities of Palo Alto, Los Altos, and Sunnyvale, as well as Moffett Federal Airfield and the San Francisco Bay. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 74,066.
Situated in Silicon Valley, Mountain View is home to many high technology companies. In 1956, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the first company to develop silicon semiconductor devices in what came to be known as Silicon Valley, was established in the city by William Shockley. Today, many of the largest technology companies in the world are headquartered in the city, including the Fortune 1000 companies Google, Symantec, and Intuit.
Geography

Mountain View is located at 37°25′19″N 122°5′4″W (37.42223, −122.08429).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 12.2 square miles (31.7 km²). 12.1 square miles (31.2 km²) of it is land and 0.2 square miles (0.4 km²) of it (1.39%) is water.
Mountain View is located on the San Francisco Peninsula, at the north end of State Route 85, where it meets U.S. Route 101. The historic route El Camino Real also runs through Mountain View. It is bounded to the northwest by Palo Alto, to the southwest by Los Altos, to the southeast by Sunnyvale, to the northeast by Moffett Federal Airfield, and to the north by the San Francisco Bay.
Downtown


Centennial Plaza at the Downtown Mountain View Station
Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south. The transit center links the Caltrain commuter rail and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) light rail and bus systems.
Going south from the downtown station, there are approximately four blocks with a high concentration of diverse restaurants, cafes, and shops. Chez TJ, one of the few restaurants rated by the prestigious Michelin Guide in the Bay Area, is located a block from Castro Street on Villa Street. Tied House, located next door, was one of the first brewpubs to open in the Bay Area, and remains a popular stop in downtown.

Economy

Mountain View is one of the major cities that make up Silicon Valley, and has many notable Silicon Valley companies either headquartered there or with a large presence.

Notable companies

The following notable companies are headquartered in Mountain View:
  • 23andMe
  • Actel
  • Antibody Solutions
  • Anybots
  • Appcelerator
  • Branders.com
  • Cavium Networks
  • Complete Genomics
  • Conceptus Inc.
  • CyberSource
  • Diamond Systems Corporation
  • eHealthInsurance
  • Evernote
  • Eye-Fi
  • Fenwick & West
  • Financial Navigator
  • Geeknet
  • Google
  • Intuit
  • Jajah
  • Kosmix
  • LinkedIn
  • Loopt
  • Meebo
  • Mozilla Foundation (Mozilla Corporation)
  • Omnicell
  • Pattern Insight
  • Plastic Logic
  • Playdom
  • SETI Institute
  • Skyline Solar
  • SmugMug
  • Soylent Communications
  • Symantec
  • Synopsys
  • Talenthouse
  • Vivus
  • Y Combinator




No comments:

Post a Comment