Google really is busy here in Australia.  First they announce Transit for Perth (and other states to come soon), and now I hear they’re building their new headquarters next door to my office.  They’re currently across Darling Harbour from us over in Darling Park here, but they’re moving here. It looks like a big block of concrete there, but it’s actually a construction site now.  Pyrmont is turning into a media hub, with Channel 7 next door too, and a whole bunch of other small media agencies near by.  Channel 10 is just up the road too.

The new Google building is been billed as a new ‘green’ style of building, apparently “Workplace6, a joint venture between site owners GPT and builder Citta Property Group, will generate one-quarter of its own power supply, take in harbour water to release heat and recycle sewage to flush toilets and irrigate nearby parks”.  Makes sense, sounds like Google is expanding its solar power scheme. Wonder if we’ll get a monitoring page like that for Sydney.

 This Lifehacker article has an image of what it’s going to look like.

Sydney’s Googlers will move into the new building in 2009. The press release was long on “dull but worthy” details such as “Workplace6 is NSW’s first 6 Star Green Star building, going above and beyond green office standards for Australia.”
We can only assume from the brevity of the press release that Google Australia has conceded that Google Zurich - which features a fireman’s pole or a slide to get you down to the  ground floor in a quick and  fun fashion - reigns supreme as the “cool” Google office. Aww.

(via Simon Job) Google Maps now has maximum resolution images for Sydney.  Not just Sydney actually, here’s the Penrith Regatta Centre.  How about the Three Sisters at Katoomba.  Newcastle’s covered too, and it looks like everywhere in between is covered too!  This is a huge update.  Doesn’t goes so far south though, the high res layers seem to stop at Waterfall.

Cool things we can now see:

• The Lucas Heights Nuclear Reactor
• Looks like there’s a test match on at Telstra Stadium (Sydney Olympic Park)
• Boats at the marina at Nelson Bay

Oh and sorry, but Melbourne doesn’t have this yet.

From auDA:

auDA, the .au Domain Administrator, today announced the 1 millionth .au domain name had been registered.

"We are pleased to announce that the 1 millionth .au domain registration is elite-finance.com.au" said Chris Disspain, auDA’s CEO. "We congratulate the Registrant of elite-finance.com.au for being part of this momentous occasion."

Adrian Kinderis, Managing Director of AusRegistry, the Registry Operator and wholesale provider for all commercial and non-commercial .au domain names concurs, "We too offer our congratulations, 1 million .au domains is a huge achievement for the .au namespace and for Australian internet users. It was only 5 years ago the tally was close to 250,000."

You really don’t see the growth in domain names that you see in other countries, especially the US, due to auDA’s very strict registration policies.  This is either a good thing or  a bad thing depending on your perspective.  Doubling in size in 5 years isn’t exactly amazing growth, but given the regulation of the market, it is a positive sign.

I’d like to see some data on the breakdown of those domains, what type of domains (com.au, net.au, org.au, etc.), what’s the actual growth rate & is it increasing or decreasing. That would give us a better picture of how the market is going.