Google made a ton of promises to the city of Mountain View, Calif.: New bike paths. New pedestrian bridges over the highway. Two new parks. Wetlands restoration. An educational science center. Major expansion of the free shuttle system that Google started running in Mountain View a year ago. $1.5 million in scholarships for local high schoolers. And a new police station.

What Google wanted in return was development rights to implement its master plan for a new Googleplex — which, if architectural renderings are to be believed, looks like what you’d get if a bay shore area had a baby with a giant glass tent. But when, Tuesday night, it came time for Mountain View to give Google the go-ahead, the city council instead gave the company a big middle finger.

As the Silicon Valley Business Journal put it:

The city council handed LinkedIn about 1.4 million square feet, the…

Google made a ton of promises to the city of Mountain View, Calif.: New bike paths. New pedestrian bridges over the highway. Two new parks. Wetlands restoration. An educational science center. Major expansion of the free shuttle system that Google started running in Mountain View a year ago. $1.5 million in scholarships for local high schoolers. And a new police station.

What Google wanted in return was development rights to implement its master plan for a new Googleplex — which, if architectural renderings are to be believed, looks like what you’d get if a bay shore area had a baby with a giant glass tent. But when, Tuesday night, it came time for Mountain View to give Google the go-ahead, the city council instead gave the company a big middle finger.

As the Silicon Valley Business Journal put it:

The city council handed LinkedIn about 1.4 million square feet, the…