Google Boston growing

Steve Vinter, engineering director of Google Boston, said today that the company's local operation will be "growing very rapidly in the next few months."

Vinter made his comments while introducing Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who was at the company's Cambridge office to speak to about two dozen journalists. Vinter said there are now 200 employees working at Google's Kendall Square location. He did not specify how many jobs might be added.

Google's Boston-based projects include the social networking service Friend Connect, Book Search, and a large number of infrastructure projects, which "don't get a lot of attention because users don't see them," Vinter said. Google also has an advertising sales team based in the Cambridge office.

Asked for specifics about what projects will be growing, Vinter said Google would be hiring on both the advertising sales side and the engineering side. "It's virtually the case that every project we have is scaling up," Vinter said.

In the wide-ranging discussion that followed, Schmidt discussed the economy, which he sees pulling out of the recession, and Google initiatives like the Android mobile phone operating system, and the communications and collaboration program Google Wave, which is currently in limited preview but, Schmidt said, is "getting ready for a much broader distribution."

Schmidt, noting that the biotech revolution occurred within a mile from Google's Cambridge office, was bullish on prospects for growth in information technology and other advanced fields in Massachusetts. He said that America should focus economic leadership in four areas: IT, biotech, clean tech, and advanced manufacturing, such as nanotech, electronics, batteries, and material science.
(by D.C. Denison, Globe staff)