E-commerce will rise fast

In Conversation

Google plans to leverage the Indian talent pool while tapping the local online advertising market. In a chat with , director (online sales and operations) Roy Gilbert, Google India, explains why. Excerpts:

How robust is online advertising in India?
Online advertising is increasing but it still does not match the steep increase in Internet media consumption patterns. We see the market for e-commerce in India growing rapidly and envisage Google being a catalyst for this growth.

But the click-based ad system is vulnerable to frauds...
The success of our advertising business depends on our delivering outstanding ROI to our advertisers. Any attempts to defraud, attack, or misuse our advertising system are taken extremely seriously. We have invested heavily in technology and personnel to manage invalid clicks and impressions, and, as a result, losses associated with these activities are small. We recently launched a feature that provides more transparency by showing advertisers the invalid clicks rates on their AdWords campaigns. We are exploring more methods to make our systems more transparent.

How big is Google in India?
Google Bangalore was one of Google's first R&D centres outside the US and was set up with a charter to launch and implement new Google technologies and products. Google Hyderabad, is home to engineering, online sales and operations, human resources and other support functions. Google Delhi and Mumbai offices focus on supporting Indian advertisers through Google AdWords programme and develop local business opportunities. We do not break our staffing numbers by region.

Any new initiatives?
Google India plays an important role in furthering Google's technology and market leadership and in serving our customers and partners world over. In India, Google is looking at continued growth, hiring, more engineering, localised products and better services for advertisers and users. The latest innovation added to the list of Google India is 'Google Finance' which officially started as a '20 per cent project' in Bangalore.

Have you been able to find the right talent mix here?
India is world renowned for its pool of talented engineers, as well as for its large English-speaking, university educated and technology literate population. We want to leverage this talent pool to provide the best search experience to our users, partners and advertisers worldwide.

Google has mega expansion plans in Hyderabad. Your comment.
It's true we are interested in expanding our operations in Hyderabad. However, reports that we will be taking one million square feet are grossly exaggerated. We have nothing further to announce at this time.