Dublin was given a jobs boost today with the news that Google is planning to establish a new operations centre in the capital, creating 200 jobs.
The new centre, which will be located in the Eastpoint Business Park, will look after the technology firm's location-based products, including Google Maps and Google Local.
"The Dublin operations centre will primarily focus on our geographic based products to ensure a great local experience for our users across Europe. We are constantly seeking to improve and further develop our location based products and Dublin will now be a centre of excellence for this activity," Google's director of geo operations in Europe David Martin said.
"Google Maps displays so much more than the geography of a place, and now incorporates rich data from thousands of sources in different languages from across the world and also includes local business listings. This Operations Centre will help to manage these data sources to give Google Maps users even more local information than before."
Recruitment has already begun for the positions, and the centre is expected to begin work later this year. Google already employs 1,500 in Dublin at its European, Middle East and Africa headquarters. Google's vice president of global ad operations John Herlihy said the company was pleased to be expanding in Ireland, and hoped the new centre would strengthen the importance of Dublin to the company as a whole.
The latest investment by Google is an indication of the growing importance of location-based services to web companies. Social networking website Facebook this week unveiled a new service that allows users to "check in" at locations through mobile web browsers and share the information with friends, and could pave the way for new advertising services based on the feature. Other services, including Foursquare and Gowalla, have been using location-based technology for some time.
“With the increasing proliferation of smart phones and Google's Android platform for mobiles, more and more people are using local and mapping products on a daily basis. We want to ensure they have a great experience and that the information we give them is accurate, useful and up to date,” Mr Martin said.
The announcement was welcomed by Dublin Chamber of Commerce, which said the investment would also support Dublin's growing internet services cluster.
Chamber chief executive Gina Quin said the investment cemented the company's importance in Ireland. "Dublin is competing against other international city regions to attract more businesses like Google and others in this cluster - Facebook, eBay and soon LinkedIn to create jobs in Ireland," she said.
ICT Ireland, Ibec's representative group for the high-tech sector, said the decision to locate the centre in Ireland highlighted the strength of the country's ICT sector.
"The ICT sector is leading Ireland's smart economy with seven of the top 10 global ICT companies having a major presence here," director Paul Sweetman said.
"In addition to the 200 jobs announced by Google today, over 2,000 new jobs in the ICT multinational sector have been announced since January 2010. In 2009, the indigenous software sector grew by 6 per cent in export value.”
