Google is reportedly spending $1.9 billion to buy the New York City office building where it rents 500,000 square feet. And since the enormous property covers nearly three million square feet, that means Google is going to be cashing rent checks from all sorts of interesting tenants.

Barnes & Noble.com rents a big chunk of the building, which occupies an entire city block in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. So does Interpublic Group’s. Deutsch ad agency. And Sprint. And Nike.

And if Google ever wants to get a deal done with Spotify, the European music service that hasn’t made it to the U.S. yet, it won’t have to look hard to find the company: Spotify has a small outpost in the building, too.

Meanwhile, if you want to see Spotify founder Daniel Ek yourself, check out our D: Dive into Mobile conference next Tuesday, where I’ll be interviewing him onstage.

The facility, which is nearly five times the size of Apple’s giant data center in Newark, Calif., isn’t exactly pretty, but as far as efforts to house 500,000 square feet of data center space in a single building go, it’s pretty impressive. And it does have a bit of Area 51 about it, particularly since Apple (AAPL) hasn’t yet revealed its true purpose. That said, it’s most likely related to some infrastructure-intensive cloud-computing initiative.

Such a drastic expansion of Apple-related show floor space will no doubt inspire speculation that the Mac maker plans to put in an appearance at CES. But that seems unlikely given the company’s reasons for bowing out of Macworld. “Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers,” the company said at the time. “The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.”

In any event, this is unfortunate news for Macworld and IDG, the publishing company that runs it. Without Steve Jobs or even Apple (AAPL) to help it upstage CES as Macworld has done in some years past, the event has far less to offer attendees and presenters than before. Certainly, no one is going to be decamping from Vegas in the middle of CES this year to hit Macworld. There’s no reason to. And with CES ramping up its efforts to woo Apple accessory manufacturers and retailers, well, things aren’t looking too good for Macworld, are they?

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• Apple Investors: “Philnote” Just Doesn’t Have the Same Ring to It
• Oh My God, They Killed Macworld! You Bastards!
• Macworld Without Steve? That’s Like “Baywatch” Without Hasselhoff

Amazon has weathered the recession better than most, but not without a concession… or three.

The retailer said Thursday that it is shuttering a trio of distribution centers in three states and will sack or transfer the 210 employees who work at them. It’s the first time Amazon (AMZN) has closed a warehouse since 2006. Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith described the closures as a balancing of the company’s fulfillment network, but its hard to view that as anything other than a euphemism for belt-tightening when a facility in Munster, Ind. that Amazon opened just a year and a half ago is among the three centers to be closed. Also shutting down: facilities in Red Rock, Nev., and Chambersburg, Pa.

“A variety of factors went into the plan to close these three buildings,” Smith told TechFlash. “We added approximately 3 million square feet of capacity in the North American fulfillment network in 2008, and will be converting a fulfillment center in Phoenix to accommodate our larger items (such as big screen TVs) and adding several hundred thousand sq feet to that facility. This additional capacity allows to the opportunity to better balance product mix and customer orders across the network year-round.”