Internet search giant Google is to significantly expand its Dublin operation by recruiting more than 500 staff for its European headquarters in Dublin.
The announcement was made this morning at a press conference in the Dublin office, Google's European Headquarters, by Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheal Martin. The expansion is being supported by IDA Ireland.
The expansion will increase the company's Dublin workforce to almost 1,400, a dramatic development given that it had just 5 people working for the company in Dublin in 2003.
John Herlihy, European director of sales and operations at Google said 160 jobs were already advertised on the google website and that he hoped to complete the recruitment process as quickly as possible. Mr Herlihy said he hoped the new positions would be filled within 12 to 15 months.
He added that he wished he could find more locations like Dublin where there are 167 languages spoken. Google employs more than 850 people at its Dublin office, comprising more than 40 different nationalities who speak 45 languages. English is the working language of the Dublin office.
Mr Herlihy said the Dublin office was expanding on the back of very strong online advertising revenue growth and that a huge range of languages and skills were required to support potential customers from the Urals to the Cape in Africa.
Google provides sales, engineering, financial, technical and other services to users and advertisers.
He also dismissed the idea that wage expectations were excessively high in Ireland. He said many Nordic countries, London and Germany were all ahead of Dublin in terms of wage costs.
He added that the skills set available to companies like Google in Ireland were as significant a consideration as the low corporate tax rate.
Minister Martin said Google's decision to expand was a huge vote of confidence in the Irish economy. He said these were the type of knowledge-based jobs the Government was keen to attract and that the expansion was a "a vote of confidence" in the country's "knowledge economy".
Google's worldwide workforce is approaching 10,000 worldwide and Dublin is the company's second largest base.
The firm was set up by two US students in 1998 and went public two years ago. Earlier this month it bought online video-sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion.
In a statement, the California-based company said it had issued 3,217,560 shares to pay for YouTube. It also paid restricted stock units, options and a warrant that can be converted into 442,210 shares of Google's common stock.
The $1.65 billion stock deal included around $15 million in funding which Google provided to YouTube between signing the deal in early October and closing the deal this month.
YouTube says it serves up more than 100 million videos a day. But its popularity has also been fueled by the widespread availability of copyrighted TV episodes and music videos for which media companies say they should be compensated.
Media industry sources in recent weeks have said that some portion of the price paid by Google would be reserved to settle potential copyright infringement suits aimed at YouTube.
