California
(650) Area Code 650 — Palo Alto, California
650 Area Code – Palo Alto, California: Location, Time Zone & History
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Map of Area Code 650
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History & Cultural Notes
Palo Alto, Redwood City, Mountain View, and the Stanford University campus all sit within an area whose economy is defined by a handful of closely related sectors: technology, venture capital, higher education and research, and biotechnology. This stretch of the San Francisco Peninsula forms much of the historic core of Silicon Valley, and its business landscape reflects that identity as much as its telecommunications history does.
The area code itself was created on August 2, 1997, when it split off from 415, taking most of San Mateo County, part of San Francisco, and the northwestern edge of Santa Clara County. An overlay was approved in 1999 with permissive ten-digit dialing beginning that September, but regulators suspended the plan statewide before mandatory compliance took effect, after a utilization study found roughly 5 million unused numbers still available.
Beyond Palo Alto and Stanford, the territory reaches Menlo Park, Los Altos, San Mateo, Half Moon Bay, Belmont, Burlingame, and Foster City. Two of the region's best-known companies trace their origins here: Google was founded in a rented Palo Alto garage in 1998 before opening its first office on University Avenue the following year, and Meta has been headquartered in Menlo Park, on the former Sun Microsystems campus, since 2011.