Google is making moves on San Francisco's Embarcadero, preparing to vacate a substantial office space at One Market Plaza while expanding its presence at Hills Plaza. According to the San Francisco Business Times, the tech giant will not renew its 320,000-square-foot lease at One Market when it expires this April. In an apparent strategy to consolidate, it will expand its offices at Hills Plaza by an additional 134,000 square feet, to a total of 550,000 square feet.

The move signifies a shuffle of employees rather than an outright reduction of Google's presence in the city, considering the company's current lease at One Market Plaza is ending. This expansion at Hills Plaza, sitting at 345 Spear and 2 Harrison streets, represents one of the larger leasing transactions in recent years in San Francisco, the dynamic, despite an uptick in office vacancy rates that CBRE currently places at 36.9 percent. Specific terms of the pending deal with owner Morgan Stanley have not been made public.

Google's recent real estate maneuvers in the city have shown a trend towards optimization, with the tech behemoth vacating its WeWork offices at 201 Spear Street in late 2023 and downsizing its lease at 215 Fremont Street earlier last summer. The footprint there was slashed to roughly 64,000 square feet, less than half its size before the pandemic, as reported by The Real Deal. However, with this latest expansion, Google's total office space within San Francisco is a notable 1.4 million square feet, which graces the Financial District's waterfront edge.