Google Opens Office in Madison

Search engine leader Google Inc. has leased 5,000 square feet of office space in downtown Madison, the Mountain View, Calif., company said Tuesday.

The office will focus on hardware and software systems design and will be led by a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison computer scientist and a graduate of the school’s electrical engineering program, said Sunny Gettinger, a Google spokeswoman. It has been operating since October but will have a formal opening this fall, she said.

The office is Google’s fourth in the Midwest. The others are in Ann Arbor, Mich., Chicago and Detroit, Gettinger said.

"We are opening an office in Madison because the city offers an excellent quality of life, a deep local talent pool and commitment to education at all levels, including the University of Wisconsin," she said.

News of the office comes on the heels of an announcement last week that Microsoft Corp. will open a research lab in Madison in the next two months, staffed by six full-time employees and run by David DeWitt, a world leader in database research and former chairman and recently retired professor in UW’s computer science department.

Microsoft made a commitment to support five graduate research assistantships in the computer science department and will likely provide internships for UW students and consulting opportunities for faculty members.

"We just haven’t had that, any of the big companies coming and opening offices in our state. It feels good," said Greg Meier, chief executive officer of Lansare Corp., a Wauwatosa-based software company that provides advanced data analytics for financial institutions.

Having Google and Microsoft in the state is a recognition of the research capabilities here, Meier said.

From the perspective of an information technology industry executive, their presence also makes it easier to recruit employees and pitch new business, he said.

"It validates this is a place for software people to be," Meier said. "These big company research centers are just key to opportunities, attracting people and creating spin-offs and new technologies."

James Laudon and James Smith will run Google’s Madison office, Gettinger said.

Laudon received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from UW in the mid-1980s.

He was previously an engineer at Sun Microsystems and director of architecture at Afara Websystems, according to his profile at Linkedin.com

Smith is a retired UW computer science professor whose research interests are computer architecture, high-performance processor and system implementations, virtual machines and power-efficient processors, according to the computer science department’s Web site.

His research group was investigating future processors and systems that provide high performance, power efficiency and high reliability, the site said.

Google will occupy almost the entire top floor of the Harvester Plaza building on Blount St. in downtown Madison, according to Siegel-Gallagher Inc., the broker for the deal.

—–

To see more of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.jsonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NASDAQ-NMS:GOOG, NASDAQ-NMS:MSFT, NASDAQ-NMS:SUNW,