Google has leased 60,000 square feet of a building in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood according to a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
This isn’t Google’s first attempt to encroach on Microsoft’s territory though. Google has had an engineering office in Kirkland, a Seattle suburb, for the past two years already. “In the next couple of years we expect to grow substantially and continue to invest in the Pacific Northwest,” Scott Silver, technical manager for Google’s Website Optimiser, said in a recent interview. At the time, he wouldn’t say how much the company planned to increase its presence in the region. Google already has a “few hundred” engineers in Kirkland, he said.
In addition to Website Optimiser, Google engineers in Kirkland have worked on Google Talk, Google Maps and Google Video. They also do a lot of work on advertising optimisation, Silver said.
The newly leased building is close to downtown Seattle and near an existing Google sales office.
Google will compete with Microsoft, which employs more than 35,000 people in the Seattle region, to hire workers.
Local analysts disagree on whether Google specifically decided to open operations in Seattle to poach Microsoft workers. Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft seems to doubt it though. “Google recruits from around the world, and if a Microsoft employee wanted to work at Google, I don’t think location would be a huge part of the equation,” he says.
Google’s website currently lists 19 openings for engineers in Seattle and Kirkland.
I guess it’ll remain to be seen whether or not Google’s added presence in Seattle will lure Microsoft employees away.
