The IT software major, Google Inc, will set up its biggest campus of Asia in Hyderabad by investing about Rs. 1,000 crore. The campus will have an office space of about 2 million square feet in 7.2 acres land at Gachibowli in the IT corridor.
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) to this effect was signed by Global Head for Google Facilities and Workplaces David Radcliffe and IT Secretary of Telangana Jayesh Ranjan at Mountain View, the headquarters of Google, in the US on Monday in the presence of Telangana Minister for Information Technology K.T. Rama Rao.
It would be the largest facility to be owned by Google outside the US and the company’s first ever own campus in India. According to the IT Minister’s office, Google has plans to make the new facility fully operational by 2019 summer and has plans to employ about 13,000 personnel.
Speaking at the MoU signing meet, Mr. Radcliffe said that about a year would be spent in planning the new campus and construction work is likely to commence around 2016 summer.
Street ViewThe delegation led by the IT Minister had a meeting with the Google Street View team of Manik Gupta, Director of Product Management; and Narayana Tummala, Ground Truth Engineering Lead for Google. While Street View has been extensively used in USA, Canada and many European countries, its applications in India have been limited so far.
Google has launched Street View in some of the tourist sites like Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar and others in partnership with the Archaeological Society of India. It is stated that Google is in talks with Union Ministry of Home Affairs to get permission for conducting the Street View exercise at a city-wide level.
Google, however, has agreed to Mr. Rama Rao’s request to make Telangana the first State to get Street View, Hyderabad to begin with. Further, it has agreed to utilise Street View for monitoring deviations from approved building plans, property tax collection and mapping of industrial land bank.
