Google gets ready to spend with '$100m VC fund'

Google has launched a venture capital arm to invest in a diverse array of industries, including the consumer internet, software, clean tech, and healthcare.

The fund, which was announced late Monday in a company blog, will be headed by William Maris, an investor and entrepreneur who was hired by Google last year to help set up the venture, and Rich Miner, former manager of Google's mobile platforms group.

Google Ventures, as the fund is called, is expected to receive a $100m investment from Google in the first year, according to a report Monday on The Wall Street Journal's website.

The new venture will put Google - a company better known for buying companies than investing in them - in the more-formal role of helping get start-ups off the ground. Other Silicon Valley companies with extensive VC track records include Intel, HP, and Motorola.

Google acknowledges that the launch is coming at an awkward time.

"Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will. If anything, we think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the "next big thing", and we'll be working hard to find them," Maris and Miner said in the jointly penned blog.

Venture capitalists have put a virtual lock on their funding, doling out a mere $3.4bn during the fourth quarter of 2008, according to a report released in January by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. The meager performance pales in comparison to the $11.7bn distributed to start-ups a year ago during the same period, a decline of 71 per cent.

During the same period, venture capital investments in IT companies plunged 40 per cent to $2.18bn, their worst level in a decade, according to figures released by VentureSource.

Original article: Google launches venture capital arm from CNET News.com