During my evening commute, I travel from Willow Road in Menlo Park and turn east to head home across the Dumbarton Bridge. As such, I pass Facebook’s headquarters every day on my commute. The campus has recently become famous for it’s large “Like” logo sign. There’s not a week that goes by when I don’t see someone out front taking a photo. In fact, some weeks it seems like we see someone every single day. This past weekend we went past it twice and sure enough there were people taking photos. So, this sign has sort of become a minor tourist destination.
But the Facebook sign has a dirty little secret. A very, very dirty secret.
As those in Bay Area may be familiar, Facebook’s campus was originally constructed by 1990’s industry darlings Sun Microsystems. But, after Sun fell on hard times and was acquired by Oracle in 2010, most of the campus was abandoned. Facebook began leasing the property in 2011 and all references to Sun were erased.
All of which is mildly interesting Silicon Valley lore but is actually more important at explaining the dirty secret of the Facebook sign.
Seems there’s still a little bit of Sun Microsystems left behind on the old campus after all.
