Posted on 10/14/2004 8:47:17 AM PDT by 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.
Posted by tdadams:
"...Then why all the ranting and raving? The problem will soon correct itself and American companies will return those jobs to Americans as they see Indian call centers aren't quite the boon they expected..."
The ranting and raving is because in the meantime people are losing their jobs and selling their homes to move away and downgrade. It's a terrible yo-yo effect, and when it finally DOES correct itself, there will be the wreckage of damaged communities and shattered careers with which to contend.
As an optimist, I absolutely believe we will see many jobs return to the USA for a variety of reasons I've mentioned. My rhetorical question is: At what cost?
Regards,
~ Blue Jays ~
I must admit, someone who sounds like a fringe third-party supporter at best, and a Democrat at worst, lecturing the rest of us about Republicanism is delicious. Love the "your party" dig.
There is a small amount of unintended irony in this statement.
How do you stop employees from leaving your firm and starting up their own? The only sure way is my suggestion to whack them. I have no problem with competition, especially when compared to the alternative.
In this case they are creating their own competition in an area of the world where security for a company's IP is very lax (Perhaps you missed this article on FR: Code Theft
I'm against theft of intellectual property.
Most companies highly value their IP and are very careful about who becomes knowledgeable in it, simply because they can create competition for themselves. I'm surprised you would think otherwise.
How do you stop competition?
Intellectual Property theft in India exposes risks of outsourcing
Friday, 6 August 2004
Jolly Technologies, a California based software manufacturer, today reported the recent theft of portions of its source code and confidential design documents of one of their key products at their recently opened research and development center in Mumbai, India. According to the report obtained from the Indian branch, Sudha Iyer, a recently hired 25-year-old female software engineer and resident of Jogeshwari, Mumbai, carried out the theft. Iyer used her Yahoo email account, which now allows 100 MB of free storage space, to upload and ship the copied files out of the research facility. Fortunately, Jolly Technologies detected the theft and is trying to prevent Sudha Iyer from further distributing it.
Outsource firm sues in India
In a case that exposes the intellectual-property risks of outsourcing in India, a small San Carlos software company has sued Mumbai police for refusing to investigate the alleged theft of proprietary source code by an employee at its Indian subsidiary.Sandeep Jolly, the founder and chief executive of Jolly Technologies, said U.S. technology companies should beware of the risks of doing business in his native land at a time when many are taking advantage of the cost savings of offshoring and entrusting sensitive software development and testing work to Indian contractors. Protection of intellectual property is still a new concept for lawmakers, police and prosecutors, he said.
``The law is very weak in India,'' said Jolly, who started his company in 2002 to develop bar-code software. ``Low-level police in India don't really know what a computer is. In our case, instead of helping us they have been harassing us. The authorities have refused to do anything until they are paid a bribe.''
IP laws lax, but US firm bets on India
In July 2002, when the Concorde-based SolidWorks contracted Geometric Software Solutions (GSSL) in India to debug SolidWorks 2001 Plus, little did the company realise that it will soon be in trouble.Shekhar Verma, a GSSL employee, who was involved with the debugging, resigned from the company after allegedly copying the source code and later, says SolidWorks, began selling it via E-mail to US software companies.
US law enforcement authorities subsequently set up an undercover sting and eventually arrested the employee in a hotel in New Delhi. It's not just teenagers and hackers who are using software illegally. Adults, including some engineers, are doing it too. Outsourcing has brought on its wake a new crime, that of software theft.
And yet, U.S. companies continue to see a benefit from hiring Indian employees. Is it a calculated risk, or is the risk overstated? Who knows, but it doesn't seem to have deterred many companies who've decided to do business there, which is their right.
My rhetorical questions, back at you, are: What are the costs if we alter the market outcomes and don't allow maximum competition? How does the American consumer (in the aggregate) benefit from protectionist policies?
Answer mine and I will gladly answer yours...you may not like the cold ease and mater-of-factness at which I can rattle off the downside to trade. I do think outside the short-term box; call me crazy.
You don't understand . . . we must forbid Google from doing business there for its own good, and ours. The government must protect it, and us.
I have respect for many of the others here who take their position and defend it, even though I disagree. but to say that there are zero intellectual property issues with regards to source code from US companies being in the hands of Indian programmers - working within a legal system that offers limited protection for such work - is simply an astounding statement. the same applies to issues regarding identity theft and personal information databases located offshore.
and these are only the stories we hear about. imagine what is really going on over there - how much takes place under the table, or that is covered up by US executives.
And that's why I didn't make any such statement. Here's a tip... I know you're seeing what you want to see, but try reading what I wrote instead.
right now, you and I and everyone here pays more for automobiles then "free trade says we should" because we have some degree of protectionism for that industry - import quotas, tariffs on imported light trucks. is the market for autos in the US "in crisis" because of it? is demand collapsing because of the market outcome in autos being altered? no, demand for autos is at records levels in the US. and foreign auto makers are forced to build plants here, that provide a good wage to US workers, to make cars for this market.
if all cars were made in china - which would be the logical outcome if market forces were allowed to take place in this segment - cars would surely costs less in the US. So what? I'd rather pay $2000 more for a car once every 7 years, and employ an american in the private sector, then pay $2000 more in taxes every year to support that family, and watch them vote Democrat and run the country into the ash heap politically.
maybe you should read your own posts - when I made the claim, you called it a total lie.
Provided they don't get tuberculosis or leprosy from their Mexican kitchen help of course.
Post a link where I called it a total lie. You can't. You lose, and you're the liar.
You're busted.
Democrats on an outsourcing safari -----Hey John Kerry! Your pals are shipping jobs overseas.
are you for real? you posted this in #153:
"No that's pretty close to flat out lying. No, it is lying. Period."
and then another poster comes along with some article snippets of some occurrences of this, and you still have the nerve to talk about this?
OK, try to keep it straight. Was that answer of mine in reference to the risk of intellectual property theft in Indian employed programmers? No it wasn't. Not in any way.
It was in response to your equating Indian employee programmers with Chinese piracy operations, implying it's all the same. That is a lie and that's why I said it was a lie.
I never said there is "zero risk" of intellectual property theft in India and you can't show one instance where I did.
You've taken my answer to one statement and attributed it as if I had answered an entirely different statement.
Now, you're either very dishonest for misrepresenting our conversation, or easily confused, or too stupid to follow a simple discussion. But whatever the cause, you seem unable to follow along and it makes discussing this issue with you pretty close to impossible.
simple and fast reads to understand how the free trade advocates think:
http://www.invisibleheart.com/Iheart/TradeNewsweekOutsourcing.html
http://www.invisibleheart.com/Iheart/EconomyOutsourcing.html
lhttp://www.invisibleheart.com/Iheart/TradeHooverOutsourcing.html
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