Talk:Silicon Valley

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New format for Notable companies

Since the "list" is getting so long, how does everyone feel about changing the list to something like this:

I've seen this done elsewhere in the 'pedia for lists that get... well... really long. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:19, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't object. Elf | Talk 23:14, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Done. :-) Actually, now I want to do the same thing to the list of cities, but I'll wait for any backlash regarding this change first. — Frecklefoot | Talk 13:49, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

Actually the change got me thinking that one issue is the word "notable". So I looked up the Forbes 500 and broke the list into 2 pieces; now the first part isn't arguable. :-) I did NOT look thru the whole 500 list to try to figure out whether there are SV companies that aren't on our list. Someone could do that, but it might be challenging... Also I could argue that any company that has ever been on the Forbes 500 (or Fortune 500, I suppose) should be listed here... because otherwise it would have to be checked every year, and things like PayPal, which I think got bought by eBay, would disappear from the list whereas it's interesting to note that they were started in SV orginally. Elf | Talk 20:37, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Time to update the company photos

The following company photos are currently featured: Google, Meta, Samsung, Intel, Netflix, Tesla, Adobe, Oracle, PayPal, Yahoo, and Cisco.

I propose to remove Samsung because it's a branch office, Tesla and Oracle because they moved to Texas, and Yahoo because it moved to New York and is now a shadow of its former self. There are hundreds of companies from all over the world which have "innovation center" branch offices in the Bay Area and it's not clear why Samsung is more prominent than the others.

I propose to add the following companies which are still based in the Valley and are prominent: Western Digital and eBay. Any objections? Coolcaesar (talk) 20:13, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hearing no objections after almost a year, I took care of it. I also added Nvidia. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:58, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Writing 1 MW

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2023 and 13 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rellis2 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Rellis2 (talk) 16:50, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggesting an addition to this article

You can't have an article about Silicon Valley or the rise of the electronics industry, without mention (at least a paragraph) of Philo Farnsworth (inventor of Television, in his San Francisco laboratory). This is just a suggestion on the talk page for anyone so inclined to make the edit/ addition. Thank you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth 2601:647:CD01:1300:988C:8C64:293:C7E1 (talk) 10:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There seem to be multiple sources connecting Farnsworth with the early history of Silicon Valley, even though he only worked in the SF area from 1926 to 1931 and 1933 to 1938. He also collaborated with the Varian brothers, connecting him with the Silicon Valley ecosystem.^[1] A sentence or two on him here would seem appropriate. --Macrakis (talk) 15:16, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

^ Lécuyer, Christophe (2006). Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970. Chemical Heritage Foundation. ISBN 978-0-262-12281-8.

IBM not even on the list of notable companies?

I don't know how there can be an article about Silicon Valley without mentioning IBM!

IBM created the hard disk drive (HDD) industry. Manufacturing began in Silicon Valley in 1957 with the IBM RAMAC 350. Other HDD companies followed, including Seagate, Maxtor, and Western Digital. The impact that the HDD industry had on the area was fundamentally instrumental in the development of Silicon Valley. Someone in the industry once told me that "rust valley" (an original medium for HDDs) would have been a more apt moniker for the early days of the region. See 'History of hard disk drives' in Wikipedia. Mconant (talk) 00:28, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like a reasonable addition to the page, probably the History section, but it isn't a candidate for the list of notable companies since that's restricted to companies headquartered in Silicon Valley. Dan Bloch (talk) 04:57, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Concur with Dan Bloch. Since the 1980s, thousands of companies from around the world have opened branch offices (or as they often call them nowadays, innovation centers) in or near in Silicon Valley in the hope of picking up some of the Valley's coolness factor. For example, Carl Zeiss AG has the ZEISS Innovation Center in Dublin (which technically isn't even in the Valley).

If we open up the list of notable companies to branch offices, it will end up duplicating most of the Fortune 1000 (and the Fortune Global 500), which would result in a coatrack article and in turn violate WP:NOT and WP:NOR.

I agree that IBM's creation of the HDD industry should be mentioned, but the place for that is the History section. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:00, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Lécuyer, Christophe (2006). Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970. Chemical Heritage Foundation. ISBN 978-0-262-12281-8.

[1]