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Part of the reason is well known, part is a little obscure.Google needed a:1) Large space in a sort of campus set up. They got that by taking over some buildings that had been used by a company called Silicon Graphics (SGI) SGI fell on hard times, and left some pretty fancy empty buildings.So big fancy building(s) cheap is an answer.Now for the obscure reason...2) To be close to some of the thickest, highest capacity fiber optic cables in the Valley. Those cables run roughly where the VTA light rail runs in Mountain View - the railroads' right of way was used for the fiber optics. While Google is on the other side of Moffett field, it is pretty close.Note that Yahoo! is also close to those tracks( on the South side of Moffett Field), where all the fiber is, as was Netscape (now Verisign, on Middlefield Road in Mountian View). That's one reason Yahoo is in Sunnyvale and not Fremont.(Okay, which railroad? The Southern Pacific Railroad, founded by Leland Stanford, (among others). They created a company called SP Communications, later known as SPRINT. Which is why America's first fiber optic cable ran along the Southern Pacific railroad tracks...)An example of fiber optic routes - they did not used to be this dense:http://svpfiber.com/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=5038Another:http://abovenet.com/maps/docs/SAN%20FRANCISCO%20SAN%20JOSE%202011-10-15.pdfA simple map. The area down near Sunnyvale is what I am talking about...Why do companies START in Palo Alto, especially downtown?One reason was given by the founder of WebTV, and it was when you are working all these weird hours, you need to have lots of different food options available at all hours, and downtown P.A. comes close to that. (Note the interest on Quora in where to get food after midnight?) Also, lots of business is done over lunch / breakfast /coffee, and if you are located in Downtown, you don't have to drive and then find a place to park.Now the Adobe story is interesting and connected... Adobe was along Charleston Ave. (on the Bay side of Highway 101) in a building that was somehow controlled by the City of Mountain View. The City of Mountain View decided it wanted this bright, shinny new company called Silicon Graphics, and basically kicked Adobe out (did not want to renew their lease) and put Silicon Graphics in their place. Adobe has done very well, thank you and built two tall buildings in Downtown San Jose, relatively close to the Cal train station(and many people do commute to Adobe on the train).So many of the Web 1.0 dot-com related companies like to be near where the optical fiber is. With Cloud services, that may be less important for some companies.Why did the older companies end up where they did, in Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, etc. ?There were a few electronic and technology companies before Frederick Terman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_TermanThere was Federal Telegraph, which made spark gap transmitters, and there was Lee De Forest, who invented the audion, essentially the triode vacuum tube. Lee De Forest received an investment from the President of Stanford, David Starr Jordan. This has been cited as the first technology venture capital investment in the valley by William Hewlett.An early group located in Stanford Industrial Park, which was driven partially by Fredrick Terman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Research_ParkSome of you remember from history class how the railroads where incentivized to build the transcontinental railroads by giving them a checker board pattern of land grants within some many miles on either side of the railroad track.Well, Southern Pacific Railroad (founded by several people, including Leland Stanford) had bunch of land in Santa Clara county near the railroad tracks, and this land was not doing much, growing corn mostly. SP decided to encourage industrial development in these parcels, and made them available (at what might have been low prices) to various industries, including the electronic ones that Fredrick Terman was pushing for. Around the same time, Wells Fargo and Bank of America senior management decided that they would also encourage industrial development in Santa Clara Valley. (Funny how that all works.) This was in the late 1950s. Sorry I don't have more names and details, but know that these were deliberate, to some degree coordinated decisions, not random events. Those bank policies appear to have worked out okay, and are still in place today.Besides Hewlett Packard, Varian (both in the Stanford industrial park), Eimac (Redwood City, Vacuum tubes) and Ampex (San Mateo, tape recorders, later video recorders) there were about 4 more big events that help rev up Silicon Valley.> Lockheed Missiles and Space moved to the South side of Moffet field.They were a very large employer. They developed the Polaris missile, which could be launched from underwater. The Polaris program had a number of firsts, one was the use of what are called PERT charts (a probalistic way of evaluating schedules), the second was that this cutting edge technology program came in on time and slightly under budget. Lockheed has since built all the U.S. submarine launched missiles, Polaris, Poseidon, and finally the Trident D-5. They also built space satellites and other things.Lockheed's move into the Valley caused a jump in salaries all over, the cost of a secretary went up about 30% the first year Lockheed was here.> IBM moved into San Jose, and later into Almaden Valley for their research center. Later in the 1960s, they developed the Winchester disk drive, that set the pattern for future disk drives.> The well known story: The "traitorous eight" left Shockley Semiconductor (which was in Mountain View) to form Fairchild Semiconductor, which was first in Palo Alto just north of Mountain View, but then moved to a larger area in Mountain View just toward the bay from Middlefield road (about 0.5 miles from where Versign / Netscape).National Semiconductor, which was in Connecticut, relocated to Santa Clara, and got its' new President from Fairchild.> Philco, later Philco-Ford, had a defense electronics operation in Palo Alto just North of San Antonio. This was later part of Loral.Summarizing, roughly five waves of development in Silicon Valley:Stanford Research Park / Stanford Industrial Park - Frederick Terman's plan. Almost all in Palo Alto, and Research combined with manufacturing, usually with a strong defense business. 1940s onward. Much of the defense business moved out by 1998, as they were outbid for people, and Texas or Florida was much cheaper. Biotech has moved in.Southern Pacific land grant development phase, mostly manufacturing in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milpitas, and San Jose. 1950s to about 2004. Much of the manufacturing has now relocated, to Texas, Arizona, Mexico, China, etc.A massive expansion phase driven by the success of the personal computer, with companies in Los Gatos, Hayward, Morgan Hill, and Redwood City, and even reached out to Salinas. 1981-1992. This was very automobile centric.Web 1.0, which needed to be near the optical fiber which was first along the SP railroad tracks. 1993 to today.Web 2.0 which sometimes uses the cloud and is not as tied to the main fiber lines, needs to be near food and near Caltrain (SP tracks) for an easier commute. 1998 to today.