Google replants its garage roots in tech workshops

Amid all the free food and other goodies that come with a job at Google, there’s one benefit a lot of employees don't even know about: a cluster of high-tech workshops that have become a tinkerer’s paradise.

Workers escape from their computer screens and office chairs to weld, drill and saw on expensive machinery they won't find at Home Depot. Besides building contraptions with a clear business purpose, Google employees use the shops for fun: They create elaborate holiday decorations, build cabinets for their homes and sometimes dream big like the engineers working on a pedal-powered airplane with a 100-foot wingspan. The “Google Workshops” are the handiwork of Larry Page, who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in a rented garage. Page authorized the workshops’ opening in 2007 to try to reconnect the company with its roots.