The global search giant Google seems to be stung by a strong Chinese fever as it continues with expansion drive across the mainland China. Almost a month after announcing that it would soon open its first dedicated Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab in the Asian country, Google has now opened a brand new office in the Shenzhen city. This is according to an article published in Techcrunch.com, following an e-mail it claims to have received from one of Google’s internal team.
The new office in Shenzhen is in addition to Google’s existing offices in other two Chinese cities ‘Beijing’ and ‘Shanghai.’ As of now, there is not much information available about this new office, apart from the fact that Google has rented an office space in one of the commercial regions of Shenzhen city. This new office is most likely to be utilized by other Google team members who keep frequenting the city.
Google in a statement to Techcrunch claimed that it has a lot of clients based in Shenzhen city and this new office will help to better communicate with them.
The tech giant’s decision to opt for Shenzhen city is a conspicuous choice as the Chinese city is known as the hardware hub and is already home to regional offices of several big Chinese companies including Tencent and Alibaba. Shenzhen’s proximity to global financial hub Hong Kong also makes it a preferable choice for big companies like Google.
The search giant’s Shenzhen expansion may be a part of Google’s ongoing effort to shore up its hardware presence in China. Although the tech giant has been very silent about this, there has been lot of murmurs about it in some sections of the media. According to a report in The Information, Google has more than doubled its headcount in its Shanghai hardware engineering team, from 20 employees to nearly 100 employees. This increase in headcount reportedly almost coincided with Google’s takeover of HTC’s mobile business last year, with possible connection between the two developments can’t be ruled out.
Despite sharing a very acrimonious relationship with the Asian giant, following Google’s exit from China in 2010, Google has never stamped out China from its growth strategy plan. The Asian giant’s enormous talent pool and the irresistible lure of its huge market has meant that Google keeps finding new ways to claw back to China. However, Google continues to remain banned in China, a situation that has certainly augured well for China’s very own Baidu, which today has transformed into a billion dollar company.