Inside the Cycleplex: The Weird, Wild World of Google Bikes

(lighthearted music)

This is a Conference Bike that Google provides

for employees to use around campus.

My team specific we regularly get together

and all seven of us will pile on the bike

and head down a couple blocks to another cafe

that's in another building.

One of the fun natures of the bike is the fact that

not everybody is facing the direction of the motion

and it's kind of surreal that you're putting

basically your life in the driver's hand

and the driver basically can take the advantage

to warn you about speed bumps

or can warn you about traffic.

At the same time though, there are cars in the road

and so you get that experience back with the driver

where you get to warn them about vehicles that are oncoming.

Part of another team building nature of it

is everybody doing the hand signals to turn

and make sure traffic is aware

that you're doing something that they might not be aware of.

I've been here for quite awhile and when I joined,

we didn't have these bikes here.

When these showed up, it was quite a surprise.

Everybody's kind of like what is that?

Is that for a show?

Is that for a display?

And as we grew, we actually got more of them.

So there's I think more than eight of these on campus

that employees can use.

It's definitely a collaborative event.