Ancient acrobat statues puzzle Googlers
As a (perhaps) final coda to the Googleplex map errata, lots of readers phoned in with declarations or speculations regarding the acrobat statues outside Building 45. Were they in fact leftovers from when Adobe lived there, and did they have some nominal relationship to Adobe's Acrobat products? Or did early explorers find these statues in the Spanish colonial days and decide this would be an excellent place for an office park?
Google occupies buildings that Adobe once occupied when they were in Mt. View across from the Amphitheater parking lot. I haven't looked to see if the statue we used to call "Gumby" is there anymore in front of the green buildings.
An email tipster responds:
Those certainly look like the acrobat sculptures that used to be outside the Adobe buildings — I used to pass by them every day when i worked at Sun in the early 90's. I had always assumed that Acrobat was named after the sculptures ....
Further corroboration comes from commenter spacemonkey:
A potentially interesting factoid: The statues referred to in #10 are holdovers from when Adobe occupied these buildings, and are why it's called 'Acrobat'.
However, commenter pimpmyPR calls BS on the whole suburban legend:
Total coincidence. No relation to Acrobat the product. However, like most big tech companies Adobe has an agreement with it's local government (now city of San Jose) to provide some level of public art in its environs. Adobe now has a couple of rusty sculptures in front of its San Jose HQ. And that funny light thing on top of its building. Funnily enough Apple has a similar agreement with Cupertino. But Steve Jobs took down the art (it was a collection of big software icons in front of Infinite Loop) because he didn't like it.
This theory seems likely, as apparently the acrobrats prefigured Adobe, according to another mail-in:
I don't know whether or not that building was ever Adobe, but I do remember when Bldg 45 was owned and occupied by Sun, back when the Google Campus was SGI. I used to work for SETI (yes, *that* SETI), which was in the building just on the other side of Landings from the one marked marked "1965 Charleston" on your map at that time, and drove by those statues every day. I always thought they were a bit odd, since Sun isn't in the habit of littering their campus with giant kids. Except for the executives, of course.
Zing! Anyone know if ye olde Sun was responsible for the acrobat kids, or what? Is there a plaque on the damn things, at least? Drop the knowledge.