Google is planning to expand its staff significantly, with the majority of the hirings taking place in Europe, the Financial Times (FT) reports.The search engine, which is increasing its personnel by a third, is attempting to avoid being seen as an aggressive American multinational.
Under the expansion, Google is set to recruit several thousand engineers in Europe to create a research and development team to rival the size of its US counterpart, according to the FT.
New head of engineering in Europe for the company Nelson Mattos commented: "I aim to grow the EMEA [Europe, Middle East and Africa] engineering team as big as the one in North America."
Mr Mattos joined Google earlier this year and is responsible for all the EMEA engineering and product development activities.
Google is "not seen correctly in Europe", Mr Mattos stated, saying that he is under the impression that Europeans view the search engine as a big American company that is simply concerned with making money.
"There is a lack of understanding of how we work. People don't understand the business model, the new computing environment and the employees in shorts."
Of Google's approximately 7,000 engineers, only 500 are currently based in Europe.
Although the company has not specified a time-frame for the European recruitment programme, the FT states that it is likely to occur within the next few years.
