YouTube Buys California Office Complex Housing @Walmart Labs

Could @WalmartLabs, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s mammoth tech innovation center based in San Bruno, California, be looking for new office space soon?

As was reported by the San Francisco Business Times, Google Inc.’s YouTube division recently paid a cool $215 million for an approximately 550,000-SF, five-building campus just a stone’s throw from its San Bruno headquarters. YouTube currently doesn’t occupy any space in the complex, which counts @WalmartLabs, Oracle and a host of other smaller companies on its tenant roster.

Industry observers are viewing the move as an indicator of future expansion for YouTube, which ultimately could mean an ouster for current tenants. In October, while speaking at a panel discussion, Google project executive Jay Bechtel said, “We like all our tenants, but we need space. The reality is that virtually everything we’ve bought ultimately has the goal of occupancy, not as an investment.”

Walmart launched @WalmartLabs in 2011 after acquiring the shopping search engine, Kosmix. With employees in the United States, Brazil and India, the division employed a total of 3,500 people at last count, and had acquired more than a dozen startups.