The Googleplex in Mountain View, California is the headquarters of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.

Many modern legends have grown up around the Googleplex workplace and its special atmosphere, the comprehensive range of restaurants and sports facilities through to laundry services.

The atmosphere of the Googleplex quickly became a metaphor for the realities of modern tech work in Silicon Valley.

These include the elimination of a strict separation between work and private life and the service mentality with which employees are looked after all around.

In such a lavishly designed atmosphere, the art on the building that is located there is charged with meaning and viewed attentively.

The installations and sculptures in and around the Googleplex are often located at the intersection of brand identity, advertising and art.

These include, for example, the large Android sculptures that were used to visualize every new version of the smartphone operating system for a number of years - until this tradition ended in 2020 with a reorientation towards virtual 3D objects.

In addition to references to playful nerd culture, the art created in the Google universe also always contains references to the understanding of technology and the future of one of the largest tech companies in the world.

He's got the Dino Times in his mouth

At the moment there is a bronze sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in front of the Googleplex, holding a copy of the “Dino Times” in its mouth.

It is natural to read this as a farewell to a print media tradition that is perceived as fossilized.

In engineering years, however, this sculpture -- it's modeled after a T. rex from the Museum of Natural History in Washington -- is itself a fossil, having been there since about 2006. However, in all accounts of the dinosaur, it remains unclear who created it and how he got his place in the first place.

The mystery of the sculpture that suddenly appeared is an important part of the popular story of the Googleplex as a creative space for self-realization that the company's employees can help shape and change.

This also means that the dinosaur has gone through several stages of decoration in recent years.

There are pictures where it is covered in pink flamingos from top to bottom.

The current variant with the newspaper can therefore only be read as a secondary reference to the print media, which are perceived as fossil;

Instead, it's about staging a humorous, technology- and science-inspired creativity that the Googleplex is supposed to project to the outside world.