Priya Padmanabhan

BANGALORE: At Google Labs across the world, employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their work time into projects that are of interest to them.

Some of Google's offerings such as Adsense and Gmail are the fruits of this “20% project” concept. And now, there is a new addition to the list from Google India-the company's latest product- Google Finance.

“A significant portion of Google Finance was developed by some engineers at the Bangalore Labs. The idea was conceived here and the initial engineering started here around 15 months back,” said Arvind Jain, center head, Google India.

The Bangalore engineers later worked in conjunction with the company's teams in New York and Mountain View.

Google's finance section, which is in its beta version, provides financial information on company stocks with added features such as interactive charts, links to relevant blogs, news, search on mutual funds, stocks, and company information, and discussion boards.

Initially, the company will provide info on North American companies but would eventually include other international companies.

The company is extremely tight-lipped about the on-going projects at the Bangalore center. Jain said that the center is focused on both global products and services and also country-specific projects.

“We believe that we are a truly global company since a significant portion of our users are outside the US. We believe that we can serve them better if we go to where they are and understand their needs better,” Jain said.

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