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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Amid every the liberated food and another goodies that come with a employ at Google Inc., there's one goodness a aggregation of employees don't modify know about: a cluster of high-tech workshops that hit embellish a tinkerer's paradise.

Workers escape from their computer screens and duty chairs to weld, learn and saw on pricey machinery they won't encounter at Home Depot.

Besides building contraptions with a country playing purpose, Google employees ingest the shops for fun: They create elaborate pass decorations, physique cabinets for their homes and sometimes dream big aforementioned 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' inaugural in 2007 to essay to reconnect the consort with its roots.

Google, which has kept the workshops low wraps until Tuesday, gave The Associated Press an inner tour presently after Page saved his example employ as CEO on April 4.

The workshops substance a peek into structure Page may essay to attain the Internet colossus work with the vigor and power of a garage-bound entrepreneur. Page believes the 13-year-old consort needs to return to intellection and performing aforementioned a spirited move as it faces competition from younger Internet stars much as Facebook, Twitter and Groupon.

"There is a opinion here at Google that every good things move in a garage," said Greg Butterfield, an field work trainer who oversees the workshops. "Larry wanted to create the aforementioned category of surround he and Sergey had when they started Google — a sort of a country or sandbox for pursuing their ideas."

Originally famous as the "Pi" Shop, the geeky flight is unstoppered inner to a privileged some among Google's 26,300 employees. To acquire entry, workers staleness pass a effort that includes much questions as "When you are using a adornment saw, what pace would you ingest to revilement finished aluminum?"

There are four removed flat — for metal, wood, welding and electronics — tucked into an isolated crossway of Google's 4.3-million-square-foot headquarters in Mountain View.

Besides heavy-duty equipment that includes an oscilloscope, ECF quarrier and miter saw, there's also some children's toys. One example of gadgetry currently low cerebration in the shops part consists of Legos — the aforementioned touchable that Page erst used to physique an inkjet printer, years before creating Google.

The projects that hit emerged from the workshops include a colossus velocipede that was fashioned to haul around 250 pounds of high-tech picture equipment. The trikes are used to cater the company's online function assist with pictures of streets and another areas outback by cars.

Engineers also hit used the shops to work on early prototypes of smartphones that run on Google's Android software as well as another products ease low utilization that the consort declined to discuss.

Most Google employees, though, ingest the shops for individualized purposes. The ideas percolating in the workshops are so capricious that employees are pleased to modify soured scrap metal or another detritus meet in case the junk strength meet someone's project. During the AP's past visit, a pair of old rotate axles and the rusted tailgate from a truck were sitting in the welding shop.

"You never know what you are feat to encounter in here," designer said.

Google isn't the inner locate in Silicon Valley where computer-coding engineers can show soured their industrialized might. A venture titled TechShops sells memberships play at about $100 per period to ingest heavy machinery for wood, metal, plastics and textiles. Besides the San Francisco Bay Area, TechShops also operates in Raleigh, N.C.

Google's workshops are liberated to every employees, aforementioned virtually every the company's perquisites. But the workshops are much more inner than Google's another benefits.

All employees staleness be certificated to run the machinery before they are issued a badge to enter. The screening usually falls to Rodney Broome, 63, a veteran journeyman who teaches the foxiness at nearby San Jose City College when he isn't busy as the boss of Google's workshops.

"I feel aforementioned I am running my own consort within the consort here," Broome said.

Just as they do when they are trying to intend hired at Google, employees hit to pass a test. About 300 Google workers hit been certificated so far. Most of them are engineers, although badges hit been presented to a some who work in ad sales.

Broome said there hit been no injuries in the workshops so far.

The screening standards are so strict that a college honor in mechanical field wasn't sufficiency for Google software engineer Ihab Awad.

He attended a topical high school's vegetation class class for a semester before earning Broome's clearance. Awad also won Broome's support to ingest the welding equipment.

His biggest acquisition so far: a rocket-shaped forbid equipped with a keg to rain beer at the modify of long life in the office.

"The workshops are my No. 1 recover at Google," Awad said during a fortuity from a welding project. "They're the important think I will be a Googler for life."

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