Google in Mysterious Floating Retail Venture

Google Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) is reportedly building a barge on an island in San Francisco Bay for the purpose of launching a fleet of floating retail stores.

The web site SFGate.com says the barge, near Treasure Island between San Francisco and Oakland, is part of a $35 million project to construct the stores and then dock them in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

SFGate, relying on a confidential budget report it obtained, says the secretive project is code-named “Hangar 3,” an apparent reference to the Treasure Island hangar where much of the construction is being done.

Each barge is supposedly to be stacked with 80 shipping containers and flanked by rows of sails. The report, from barge-builder Turner Construction Co., an international contractor based in New York, says each barge is intended to be used as a “floating retail store.”