Google Launches First Overseas HQ In Ireland
by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London
08 October 2004

Google, the world’s best known and most used internet search engine, officially opened its first headquarters outside of the United States in Dublin, Ireland on Wednesday.

The Irish division will serve as the company’s headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and according to Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, will employ 150 employees covering 17 languages in addition to technical support staff.

Brin went on to explain that the quality of Ireland’s workforce, rather than its low corporate tax rate, was the chief motivation behind the move to Ireland.

"We did not go with the lowest taxes but the access to young and talented people is what made our decision," he was reported as saying.

The decision was hailed by the Irish government, and Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harnie described the move as “a huge vote of confidence for our knowledge-based economy."

Google was first launched in 1998 and has rapidly become the most used internet search engine; it clocks more than 200 million daily searches and has built its success on technology that returns a higher number of relevant results to users’ search queries than rival search engines.

The company’s flotation on the Nasdaq index in August 2004 was the largest technology IPO since the bursting of the 1990’s dotcom bubble.

The firm is also preparing to launch a new search feature enabling users to read book excerpts online, rivalling a similar system used by online retailer Amazon.

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