In the arms race to offer more perks, Bay Area startups are turning to their peers: other fledgling companies like Uber, TaskRabbit Inc. and Postmates Inc.
Seeing an opportunity in the abandoned space, a community of artists and writers from across the bay settled at the waterfront in the late 1950s, turning whatever was left of the shipyard into a flamboyant floating community.
The founders of the Pirate Bay, the website, seemed to relish the court process, turning up to court in a bus daubed with slogans, playing the part of outsiders battling unjust authority and insisting that they were merely defending a popular technology rather than promoting illegality.