Double dose of good news for Jack London Square today. First was that hot solar start-up Sungevity is leasing an additional 36,500 square feet in the mostly empty Jack London Market building. Sungevity is hoping to reach 400 employees by the end of the year which will give a great shot in the arm to the local economy. Even better was Sungevity CEO, Andrew Birch's commitment to growing in Jack London Square for the foreseeable future. The second piece of good news is that Daniel Patterson of COI fame has begun construction on his new restaurant Haven (also in the Jack London Market building). It's set to open in November of this year and will provide another great fine dining option alongside Bocanova and Ecuentro. Hopefully more businesses build/relocate/expand in the area and begin to realize that it's a great place to work and play.

I went to grab a coffee this afternoon at Blue Bottle in Oakland and the barista let me know a celeb was in the area - Mark Ruffalo. I have no real opinion about him as an actor. I think I've seen two movies he was in and thought he didn't add nor took away from my enjoyment of said movies. However, I'm always curious when movies or TV shows shoot in Oakland (Moneyball, Matrix Reloaded, etc) so I went to rusty-trusty Google and typed in "Mark Ruffalo Oakland". Nothing remotely relevant came up. Tried a few variations, adjusted some search parameters (only searches within 24 hours - one week) but still nothing that explains why Mark Ruffalo was in Oakland. I then popped over to Twitter and typed in the same keywords "Mark Ruffalo" and got these results:

As you can see, the 5th result down mentioned Mark Ruffalo and Sungevity, a solar startup down the street. Clicked on the link and BAM!, Mark Ruffalo sitting in a Tesla Roadster wearing a Sungevity hat. Looks like he was in the area not to shoot a movie but to pop into Sungevity for something or other.

Now these are just two specific instances and of course, I still do most of my general search on Google but it's been a long time since I last found the answer to a query outside of Google. It's a death by a thousand cuts for them as Facebook, Twitter, and others start chipping away at their defenses. Google looked unassailable, much like Microsoft 10-15 years ago. Today, there's only one product of Microsoft's that I use, Office. I've switched from Windows to Mac for my hardware, Windows Mobile to iPhone for my cell, and even Exchange to Google Apps for my businesses. The endless cycle of rise and fall in tech is unrelenting and no one is immune.