Google plans to buy office space in New York City for $2.1 bln

Sept 21 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc-owned Google plans to buy an office building in Manhattan for $2.1 billion, even as most of its employees work remotely and companies adopt hybrid work models.

The deal for St. John's Terminal site in New York City, expected to open by mid-2023, will complete in the first quarter of next year, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said in a blog post https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/increasing-googles-investment-in-new-york on Tuesday.

The announcement comes nearly a month after the company's top boss, Sundar Pichai, told employees in an email that Google was extending its voluntary return-to-office policy through January due to rising cases of COVID-19 variant Delta.

The new investment "builds upon our existing plans to invest more than $250 million this year in our New York campus presence," Porat said. (Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)