Google acquisition reports speculative

Kishore Kumar

HYDERABAD: Google Inc. today brushed aside media reports that it is in search for acquisitions in India.

Terming the same as speculation, the search engine major’s spokesperson here stated that the issue may have been stemmed from a job posting placed the company’s website in India for the position of Corporate Development Manager, South Asia.

"The job postings do not directly and 100 per cent correlate with the people we are actually hiring,’’ clarified the spokesperson. ``We hire the person, not the job at Google. Job postings are not a predictor of what we're going to do in the future. We think of them as a marketing program to attract people to apply, but then they go through a more private and internal process," she informed.

Traditionally Google is known as a company, which doesn’t reveal the exact details of the acquisitions it makes. ``While we do not give out specific details about such initiatives, historically, our M&A strategy has been to look for unique products, technologies and engineering teams that can help us provide innovative products to our users or enhance existing services,’’ the spokesperson said.

Media reports today had said Google is currently in talks with a number of start-ups with unique and innovative business models, particularly in areas like voice and SMS-based advertising, to expand its presence in the country, an official close to the development said.

The spokesperson also cited the examples of Where 2 and Keyhole. ``For example, we integrated Where2 and Keyhole technology with Google Local to provide a ground-breaking mapping experience for our users.’’

The acquisition of Keyhole provided the core mapping abilities in Google Earth. Google announced the Keyhole acquisition in October 2004. Australian mapping company Where2, acquired the same year, enabled Google to adopt the mapping features in Google Maps.

Google has acquired as many as seven companies this year with the most recent being Neven Vision. Google would use the latter’s technology for Picasa. Digital Photo Management company Picasa, which was based out of Mountain View, was acquired by Google in 2004.

The Google spokesperson also denied reports that said the company employs more than 3000 professionals in India. `` Reports that we have 3000 employees in India are inaccurate and exaggerated.’’

However, she confirmed that Google has a worldwide strength of 7,942. ``We do not break employee numbers per region or geography. On a worldwide basis, Google employed 7,942 full-time employees as of June 30, 2006.’’

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