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Business Title: Google Will Hire At Least 6,000 Workers In 2011 Google said Tuesday that 2011 will be its biggest hiring year ever, an effort that would have the company hiring more than 6,200 workers around the world and at least 2,000 in the Bay Area, in what economists called an optimistic sign for the region's halting economic recovery. With those plans, Google would boost its work force by at least 25 percent in a single year to more than 30,000 employees, nearly triple the company's size at the end of 2006. Google would then be more than twice as big as Yahoo and more than six times bigger than the company that has become its most formidable competitor -- Facebook. "The growth that we're seeing across a lot of different areas is really based on seeds we planted a long time ago," Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice president for engineering and research, said in an interview with the Mercury News on Tuesday. "We made investment decisions a long time ago to plant the seeds in different areas, and the exciting part is those seeds are actually developing now." Beyond search The surge reflects Google's ambitious plans to become a powerful force in areas of the Internet far beyond its traditional sweet spot of search, adding a growing range of products focused on smartphones and tablet computers, including software applications that run on the Internet "cloud" rather than on the hard drive of a PC, and that Google is targeting at businesses as well as Advertisement consumers. "It'll be pretty much across the board," Eustace said of Google's hiring plans. Google did not disclose specific hiring numbers, but the company's previous biggest year for hiring was 2007, when it added 6,131 people. Eustace said much of this year's hiring will be in and around Google's headquarters in Mountain View, plans that cheered local economists waiting for strong financial results from the valley's big tech companies to translate into a significant burst of hiring. About one-third of Google's work force is in the Bay Area, and Eustace said the company's 2011 hiring would reflect that ratio -- meaning Google would hire more than 2,000 people in Mountain View, at San Bruno-based YouTube and in its San Francisco offices. By itself, the company's local hiring won't solve the region's employment woes. The San Jose metro area still has more than 90,000 people who are unemployed, according to state employment data, and Yahoo on Tuesday announced more than 100 layoffs. But for a Bay Area buffeted by years of bad employment news, "the symbolic nature of the hiring is far more important than the number," said Brad Kemp, an economist with Beacon Economics. "This is an example of the type of news, and the type of hiring event, that will help us turn the corner toward a more normally functional economy. So I think this is a significant story." Google's local hiring plans reflect a boost equivalent to double the planned work force at Tesla Motors' former NUMMI plant in Fremont, noted Stephen Levy of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. "At least for this company and probably for this industry, we've reached a place where new sales growth translates into hiring growth," Levy said. Technology "is our big job area, so it's a significant sign for Silicon Valley and for the region." Google's hiring announcement Tuesday, coupled with the recent bombshell that Google co-founder Larry Page will become CEO in April, may cause some in the valley to revise their opinion that Google has had its entrepreneurial mojo crushed by its growing bureaucracy. 'Talent war' Page has signaled that his biggest challenge will be to recapture the nimbleness that characterized Google's early days as a startup. The company's ambitious hiring plans are "another salvo in the talent war, particularly now that Larry Page is stepping into the CEO role," said Scott Ellison, an analyst with the research firm IDC. "A number of people I've talked to in the valley are now saying they would consider Google as a next step in their career, because it's getting back to its entrepreneurial roots." Google last week reported fourth-quarter revenue of $8.44 billion, a 26 percent jump compared with the fourth quarter of 2009. Google notched profit of $2.54 billion, or $7.81 a share, a 29 percent jump over the same quarter in 2009. Analysts in the past have registered concerns about Google's free-spending ways. But in light of its fourth-quarter results following a year of significant hiring in 2010, analysts generally reacted positively Tuesday to Google's hiring plans. "Google was able to grow during the recession, which was something Yahoo wasn't able to do, and (Microsoft's) Bing (search engine) still isn't profitable, so from Google's perspective there is no reason to slow down," said Rick Munarriz, senior analyst at The Motley Fool. Google added 4,565 workers in 2010, a big turnaround from 2009, when the company's work force shrank for the first time in its 12-year history. Even at 30,000 employees, Google would still be less than half the size of valley giants like Intel and Cisco Systems, a third the size of Oracle and a tenth of Hewlett-Packard. But like Facebook, the size of Google's work force doesn't reflect its full importance to the Internet and the valley. Google executives say the majority of the company's revenues will come through mobile products in future years, and it is rapidly adding engineers to work on its Android mobile operating system, which is expected to power a wave of tablet computers that will compete with Apple's iPad. Google is trying to develop a range of location-based services that would deliver advertising to users through their smartphones, and it is racing to develop a range of products based on people's social relationships that would allow it to compete with Facebook. "Obviously, we're optimistic about the future," Eustace said. "I think it's unusual for a company to see so many opportunities align."
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