Google Founders on Hiring Trip to India

myway news / AP ^ | Oct 13, 3:18 PM | S. SRINIVASAN

[Walkin Man]

Google Founders on Hiring Trip to India

Oct 13, 3:18 PM (ET)

By S. SRINIVASAN

BANGALORE, India (AP) - Google Inc. (GOOG) founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin said Wednesday that some new features on the world's top search engine and other services will come from its research center in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where they are on a hiring spree.

"One approach we are taking is that Bangalore is where we run a mirror exactly of what we have in the United States in terms of development," Brin told reporters in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state.

Page and Brin said they were visiting India looking for "extraordinary talented entrepreneurial people who want to make a big change in the world."

Researchers in Bangalore will work with their counterparts in Google's U.S. offices to conceptualize new services and develop software, they said.

This includes developing search engines that will present results based on speech input or drawings, ones that will work in more languages than at present, personalizing search results to suit individual preferences, and new features for Google's new e-mail service, they said.

Google set up offices in the southern Indian cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad earlier this year. Brin said Google was in fact "too late" in tapping Indian talent.

"We would have preferred to do it sooner. But there are only so many things we can do at once. It is a fast growing business," he said.

Their comments came in Bangalore, their third stop in India, after New Delhi and Hyderabad earlier this week.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, runs an Internet business that revolves around its search engine - which covers 4.3 billion Web pages.

During their low-key visit, the two shopped in New Delhi's Connaught Place, rode in a three-wheel motorized rickshaw in Hyderabad and spent time like a "couple of sophomore backpackers doing India," the Times of India said.

They also called on Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Krishna Bharat, who created Google's news service, is now busy hiring in Bangalore. "We don't have a cap (on how many to hire). We will take in as many people as we can, if they meet our global standards," he said.

[js1138]

America isn't America without freedom. Economic freedom is primary. Everything else follows. If you can't own, buy and sell property and services you might as well live in Canada.

[1rudeboy]

I just left a note on your Blackberry to make sure and open a foreign subsidiary in Africa after you get home from the club. Then we can lay-off those workers at the Des Moines plant. A Wal-Mart opened down the street . . . they'll be fine.

[1rudeboy]

Are you at work now? If so, what the heck are you doing here?

[dennisw]

A sign that google has jumped the shark.

[1rudeboy]

I see this stuff in action everyday at work, you must see something else, so be it.

I know it's less than proper to carry an argument from one thread to another, but when you said that the US' second-largest export after aircraft is agricultural products, is that something you saw at work? [chuckle]

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

Lets see how much product these companies sell when we are all stocking shelves at Wal-Mart for minimum wage.

Fact is, the American consumer is very happy to buy cheap stuff made in China at Wal-Mart, rather than more expensive stuff made by their fellow citizens.

[Arthalion]

I'll see your a link and raise you a link: http://www.factcheck.org/article249.html

Too many people try to counter declining median wage statistics among the middle class with statistics completely irrelevant to the point of the discussion. From your own link: Personal income has grown nearly 6 percent over the past year, with wage and salary income up 5 percent
True, but this is across all income levels. Nobody disputes that the wealthy are becoming wealthier, or that the poor maybe aren't quite as poor, but those numbers are irrelevant to the incomes of the people we specifically define as middle class (earning between $25k and $75k a year).

But a new Bureau of Labor Statistics study shows that more white-collar managerial and professional jobs, with relatively fewer low-wage jobs, are being created today...The Kerryites conveniently focus on non-supervisory production jobs, the very low end of the wage spectrum...It has no meaning in the 21st century high-tech information age."

The author misses two very important key points here. First, the people working those nonsupervisory jobs make up the bulk of the middle class. Dismissing them as irrelevant and writing them off is the very thing that is placing this nations middle class in jeopardy. Second, the "high tech information age" thing is a fallacy. Tech and science jobs are no longer being created in the U.S., with the vast majority of both American and international funding and development in those areas being fed into China and India. Only a moron would go into technology today in the U.S., when some guy in India can do the same job as you for $2.50 an hour.

The references to the income increase for professional and managerial positions is also irrelevant, because these groups make up a relatively small percentage of the American middle class (besides, is the author seriously suggesting that we all become managers?)

[oceanview]

right. so a low productivity US worker is no longer working for american express at their call center - and instead an Indian call center worker is. what happens to the productivity number? it goes up. it goes up no matter how you measure it - if you just take it for US workers, there is no longer a US person employed at that low productivity job (the job is still being done mind you) - so it goes up. If you include the foreign worker, well they are performing the same job for 1/3rd the wage, so again the productivity number rises.

There are only two ways to increase productivity - automation & lower wages. I will grant you that our economy is doing both, but don't discount the lower wages component as a big contributor to the "productivity miracle".

What we want more of is the automation part of this. But unfortunately, we have the migrant farm worker phenomena at work now at US tech companies. who would invest in automated lettuce picker machines when migrant farm workers are available for such low wages? who would invest in automated customer support centers when offshore workers who can do this are available at such low wages?

[oceanview]

my skill level is quite high - I can do two things at once.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

I don't blame them for looking for the most brilliant people they can find - in any country of the world.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

The American middle class is being squeezed, and I believe that outsourcing is a driving factor.

It was the middle class that made Wal-Mart a success. Cheap Made-In-China merchandise.

[1rudeboy]

The Times has played fast and loose [the Middle Class is not disappearing]

Interestingly enough, this link mentions factcheck.org.

[1rudeboy]

Please elaborate how lower wages contribute to output per worker.

[Arthalion]

Ah well, my lunch break is over so I need to get back to work before my productivity numbers drop and my job gets outsourced. I just have one comment about that article...it is comparing 1980 numbers to 2003 numbers.

When will this become a concern? When we get down to the 1990 numbers? When we're down to the 1980 numbers? Undoubtably some will then shout "But we're so much better off than we were in 1970!", so we'll all sit back and watch our income drop back down to 1940's levels so we can be "competetive" with the rest of the world.

I refuse to sit back. All numbers can be spun, but the numbers themselves don't lie.

America first means Americans first.

[Toddsterpatriot]

The people who are working for Google over there and being trained in the technology can go start their own company, using the proprietary, patented technology to become Google's competition.

Good point. I think the solution is when an employee leaves a company, he should be whacked. Wouldn't want a Siebel to compete with an Oracle now, would we?

[LowCountryJoe]

No!!! Not the Heritage Foundation, they're a bunch of communists.

[oceanview]

they output the same level of goods and service, with fewer workers - no difference between GM buying a robot to replace 100 painters, or AMEX sending 100 jobs offshore.

[LowCountryJoe]

Now you're starting to get the hang of it.

[LowCountryJoe]

Kudolow is a communist too, no doubt.

[Walkin Man]

Fact is, the American consumer is very happy to buy cheap stuff made in China at Wal-Mart, rather than more expensive stuff made by their fellow citizens.

Sure, its a vicious circle.

Free trade globalists and their lackeys in Washington DC export high paying blue collar jobs to slave laborers in China, child-labor sweatshops in India, etc. This puts downward pressure on the remaining employed Americans who have less money to spend, so they spend it at the Great Wall-Mart.

At the same time our two political parties encourage, reward even, illegal aliens that swarm across our borders to further depress wages and steal jobs from Americans.

Free education for their kids, free health care, social security benefits, nobody looking for you at all once you are past the border, can ya blame them for coming??

Thats for low end jobs, for high end jobs we have the special visa programs...

Yup the free traitors got us coming and going.