The Google effect: How has the tech giant changed Pittsburgh's commerce and culture?

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You can see them at The Coffee Tree Roasters at Bakery Square — scruffy Mark Zuckerberg lookalikes sauntering in for a latte, their Google badges dangling from blue lanyards. (It’s not a status they care to advertise: Gaze too long and one young man tucks his lanyard under his T-shirt.)

They are the Googlers, approximately 350 of them housed in the former Nabisco Factory on Penn Avenue in Larimer. Where decades ago the aroma of baking Lorna Doones wafted out the windows, now every 150 feet or so, microkitchens stand ready to supply free salads, Cheerios, organic protein bars and quinoa.

Soon, the local Google head count will grow to 500, maybe more.

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