The search engine giant Google (www.google.com) announced on December 3 that it has opened a research and development center at its Tokyo offices. The centre's role in Google's global R&D network is yet to be defined and will be shaped by the people who are hired to work there, said Howard Gobioff, the centre's engineering director and principal engineer. Gobioff is one of two engineers currently working at the center, and said their first job is to recruit additional members. Three people have already been found although none have started work yet. The new center makes Japan the fourth country in which Google has an R&D presence. The others are the US, Switzerland and India.
Gobioff said that Google does not have a set number of engineers it is looking to hire for the Tokyo centre, that this will depend largely on the quality of people who apply, and that the company is looking for really smart people who have an interest in building things, are flexible and want to take on new problems in new domains. Wayne Rosing, senior vice-president of engineering at Google, said that Google feels it's important to bring all the information in the world and make it available to everyone in a very democratic way, and that the goal is to have Google support in all of the large, linguistic and cultural groups in the world.
