Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt has spoken about the search engine provider's plans in Australia.While meeting a number of key advertising clients and employees in Sydney, Mr Schmidt has been consulting on plans to expand the firm's local operations, Australian IT reports.
Google intends to open a new headquarters in the city next year. The executive also revealed that the company plans to add to the 200 employees it currently has in Australia, although he did not specify how many staff members would eventually move into the new operations centre.
He said: "It will have as many good people as we can hire. They will be involved in more partnerships, more revenue, more customer service and more innovation in engineering."
Mr Schmidt went on to say that he likes Australia because it is one of the firm's top ten markets worldwide and he believes it will form part of the shield that will protect Google from recession in the US.
He stated: "Australia makes a lot of money for us. It would be fair to say that we are not investing here. We are making lots of profits in Australia and we're reinvesting those."
The executive went on to say that international markets are now the major revenue generator for Google, adding this "will continue".
Also speaking in Sydney this week, Alan Noble, Google Australia and New Zealand's head of engineering, revealed that the search engine provider it is to roll out its transit maps service in the Australian city of Perth within the next few weeks.
