Alphabet Leads Tech Retreat on Real Estate Deals

Google’s parent company, among the San Francisco Bay Area’s largest property owners, is starting to pull back from its decadelong land grab.

Alphabet in recent weeks has broken off talks to buy or lease more than 2 million square feet of office space in the Bay Area, including what would have been one of the largest ever real estate deals in San Francisco, two people familiar with the matter said. The retrenchment could portend a broader real estate shakeup in the tech industry’s epicenter, where firms are grappling with both an economic downturn and the possibility that many employees will want to continue working remotely for some time to come.