Google opens London GooglePlex for mobile push

Google has officially unveiled its London GooglePlex, promising it will milk the capital for its wireless know-how.

The new office, which occupies two floors of Belgrave House in the Victoria area of London, now plays home to 200 Googlers. The new GooglePlex will also be the base for the search giant's next European engineering centre.

Google is now recruiting engineers. Although spokespeople refused to say how many, Nikesh Arora, VP of European operations, said mobile engineering will play a key part in the London labs' future, as will developing localised products.

He said: "Europe is ahead of the US by light years when it comes to wireless technology."

The team will target its wireless efforts "more toward taking applications and making them available on mobile", Arora said. "Mobile is definitely coming of age - an interesting phase has arrived."

Google has no immediately plans to blend its mapping service with mobiles' locating potential, according to Arora. "GPS-wise, it's too early to tell," he said.

However, the Google VP did foresee some problems in bringing Google services to the handheld. "There are way too many phones, way too many standards and way too many OSes out there," he said. The problem of monetising mobile services doesn't seem to be playing on Google's mind, though.

Arora said of Google's product development strategy: "We worry about building a cool product, then we worry about making money in the future."

The soon-to-be-employed London-based engineers will structure their time in the same way as their US colleagues, with 20 per cent of work time devoted to strategic projects and 10 per cent to personal creative work - a scheme which has already spawned Google News and Gmail.

The Victoria office is Google's second home in the UK. When the search giant opened its first base in the capital four years ago, it was homed in the Soho area.

Google celebrated the opening with a competition for schoolchildren to win the chance to see their Google doodle - the customised versions of the logo that appear on special occasions - on the Google.co.uk site until 17:00(GMT) today, where it will be seen by 17 million Google UK users.

The winning Google doodles can be seen here. Dennis Hwang, Google's official illustrator, joked: "My job security just went out the window."