Unlike the coal towns’ usurious pricing to a captive market (another day older and deeper in debt), Google is almost certainly losing money on this hotel. They don’t care. They shell out twice as much for a temporary apartment with every corporate relocation package they give to new hires.

Oh, my little boy/girl, if they do it, they’re never going to lose money in the end. Their business is not hotelling; it’s ads powered by software. If maintaining the workers in a semi-slave state works for them, this is a minor cost for them