Silicon Valley 2018: Google, Singularity, Waymo

Par Gabriel Goldberg 3 June 2026 6 min read

In June 2018, I landed in San Francisco with a Google invitation in my pocket and a single obsession: to understand, from the inside, what Silicon Valley was building for the next ten years. Eight years later, much of what I saw — self-driving cars, the Google bikes, the campus-as-manifesto — has become daily life. A personal account. An invitation you don't decline When Google invites you to spend a week in Mountain View to talk innovation, future of work and mobility, you don't ask twice. At the time, I was running a digital business in Belgium and the brief was a single line: experience California, learn fast, come back changed . I left exactly like that — slightly shaken, infinitely more curious. The arrival is through San Francisco. First shock: Market Street, its squealing streetcars, the rainbow flags up for the imminent Pride, and already that mosaic of worlds the city somehow holds together — a brand-new Decathlon next to an Equinox sportsclub, a CVS Pharmacy a stone's throw from an encampment. Market Street, day one. San Francisco has never known whether to choose the party or the friction. San Francisco from above: the skyline of a utopia That same evening, view from the 30th floor. Downtown stretches to Twin Peaks, the City Hall dome catches the last light, and below you can guess SoMa, its warehouses turned into startup HQs. It's that view that made me understand: Silicon Valley is not a geography — it's a state of mind that irrigates the entire Bay. SoMa at…