Over the weekend, Google celebrated the Fall of the Berlin Wall with one of its doodles, failing to note its part in the history of one of the sections.
According to the Google Doodle team, they “took a short bike ride from our Mountain View, California headquarters to our local public library to study an actual piece of the Berlin Wall.” These segments of the Berlin Wall were featured in the Doodle.
What the post fails to mention is how the two sections ended up at the library and how it might not have had to do that cycle ride if it had taken a less evil interest in history sooner.
The 12-foot-tall remnants sections of wall were bought over to the US by German-born businessman Frank Golzen. It all seemed fair enough. After all, they were spoils of a war which the US had spent a lot of time and money winning and made a suitable monument to the victory. They were placed in the Bayside Business Plaza where they were a lot more attractive than many of the other things on the estate and provided a bit of history that is missing in many Industrial Parks.
In 2012, Google bought the entire park, did not like the inclusion of the two sections of the Berlin Wall, and gave the Golzen family until summer 2013 to take the historic Berlin Wall out of the industrial park.
A 2012 City of Mountain View Staff Report stated that although the donating family has until next summer to remove the installation from the current location, their preference (and the preference of the new owner of the property) was to remove it sooner.
However, the recommendation to relocate the seven-ton concrete slabs to remote Charleston Park, adjacent to the Googleplex, was nixed by the City Council, who voted instead to move the Berlin Wall sections to its current home in front of a downtown public library. The walls were moved and re-dedicated in November last year.
