The Microsoft campus in Redmond would most likely not be knocked over by the tsunami: a rather hilly Seattle is in the way, then there's the large Lake Washington, and then Redmond is another ~40 feet above the lake on the far side, plus another ~2 miles inland. A fair amount of the energy of the tsunami is going to be expended by the time the Microsoft campus gets salted. (Kirkland is west of Redmond, adjacent to Lake Washington, so it's a similar-but-somewhat-less-optimistic story there. Fremont is adjacent to Seattle and slightly inland, so it will be worse there.)
Of course, the infrastructure of the greater Seattle area is going to be trashed, but chances are good that the Redmond and Kirkland campuses of Microsoft and Google respectively would be intact.
Link to the inundation zone predicted for a magnitude 7.3 earthquake on Seattle: http://wa-dnr.s3.amazonaws.com/Publications/ger_ofr2003-14_t... This isn't even "the big one" as the OP describes, much less "the really big one", but it's a rough description of where the flooding will happen. Downtown Seattle (up and left of the word SEATTLE on the map, with streets in a dense diagonal grid) won't be strongly affected, because downtown Seattle is a hill. With an 8.5 or 9.0 earthquake, of course, Seattle will be much worse off, but there's still some hope that Redmond and Kirkland won't get too damaged.
Of course, the infrastructure of the greater Seattle area is going to be trashed, but chances are good that the Redmond and Kirkland campuses of Microsoft and Google respectively would be intact.
Link to the inundation zone predicted for a magnitude 7.3 earthquake on Seattle: http://wa-dnr.s3.amazonaws.com/Publications/ger_ofr2003-14_t... This isn't even "the big one" as the OP describes, much less "the really big one", but it's a rough description of where the flooding will happen. Downtown Seattle (up and left of the word SEATTLE on the map, with streets in a dense diagonal grid) won't be strongly affected, because downtown Seattle is a hill. With an 8.5 or 9.0 earthquake, of course, Seattle will be much worse off, but there's still some hope that Redmond and Kirkland won't get too damaged.