Google (News - Alert) Inc., owner and operator of the largest search engine in the world, has agreed to temporarily house a new engineering school in their New York City headquarters for Ithaca, New York based Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

While the CornellNYC Tech campus is completed on Roosevelt Island in the East River, 22,000 square feet of Google's Ninth Avenue property will be provided. A deal between Google and the two universities stipulates that the space will be available for five and a half years, or until the new campus is completed.  The original 22,000 square feet may be expanded to 58,000 if necessary.  Space for the schools, which is valued at between 10 and 12 million dollars has been donated by Google.  

The new engineering school carries a price tag (News - Alert) of two billion dollars and will eventually enroll 2,000 students and 280 faculty members.  The student body will start small with the first classes held later this year, and eventually build, with the first complete group of students arriving in 2013.  Daniel P. Huttenlocher, a professor of computer science at Cornell's main campus in Ithaca has been selected as the dean.  Classes will be provided in three main areas of study, including green design, Internet information and computers, and bioscience and health.   

 The school is also an initiative by New York City mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg (News - Alert) to better compete with California's Silicon Valley in bringing tech jobs and new companies to the city.  The mayor at a news conference said, "Today we're second only to Silicon Valley as a tech center, and we don't like to be second to anybody."  

It is estimated that CornellNYC Tech will generate 23 billion dollars for New York City's economy, and also produce nearly 600 spinoff companies over 30 years.  New York faced direct competition in landing the bid to build the school, including an offer from Palo Alto (News - Alert), California based Stanford University.  Already, 100 million dollars and 11 acres of land have been allocated by the city for the eventual permanent campus on Roosevelt Island.