Reuters (www.reuters.com) announced on November 18 that the search engine giant Google Inc. (www.google.com) has opened an office just down the road from rival Microsoft Corp.'s headquarters in Seattle's suburbs as it seeks to lure local engineering talent. Google, which competes with the world's largest software maker in Internet search as well as for employees, has leased space in Kirkland, Washington, less than 8 km from Microsoft's Redmond headquarters.
Alan Eustace, vice president of engineering at Google, said that the only reason to start a remote engineering office is to hire really talented people, that the Seattle area has an amazing amount of technical talent, but that in some cases Google has had difficulty hiring people, because they did not want to leave the Pacific Northwest for California's Silicon Valley. Eustace also said that the new office, which takes up an entire floor of a building in downtown Kirkland, will have perks similar to those in other Google offices.
Google is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and also has engineering offices in New York, Santa Monica, California, Zurich, Bangalore, India and Tokyo. So far, about 10 Google employees are working in Kirkland in a space that could hold at least 200 more people. Some engineers with ties to Seattle would be moving up from Mountain View as well. Google is inviting local friends, family members, civic leaders and press to an invitation-only party on November 18, but declined to say whether Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was invited.
