Announcing Google Research, Europe

[Roritharr]

This really makes me consider moving my family to Zurich.

Looking back at growing up in Germany/Europe made me really feel disadvantaged compared to people growing up in more tech friendly environments. I would want my child to grow up somewhere where technology is not overwhelmingly debated about in a negative light.

So much good stuff is coming out of ETH that it really seems to be a place where people talk more enthusiastically about tech in general.

[XCSme]

I have actually applied to Google Zurich (but after 10 interviews they didn't hire me) and studied a bit how the life is there. There are many advantages or living there, but the cost of life and the fact that most people in Zurich are immigrants makes it a pretty cold city where it is hard to make friends or stay for a very long period of time. I think that now your point about "tech friendly environments" is not relevant anymore, because many countries support tech companies and offer a lot of grants for programmers and tech-related activities.

[1010310201]

It is really a stretch to claim that Germany isn't tech friendly. It isn't pseudo-tech friendly, i.e. Germans have the obnoxious habit of separating hype from tech.

The only area where I'd agree is nuclear power, which regrettably doesn't have wide acceptance.

[zerr]

Not at all. Germany is one of the most tech/dev friendly country, especially if you are outside web dev. I see a lot of C++ engineering opportunities there. If only it was an English speaking country, and they had a sun... (It's a shame that we don't have a good English speaking country in whole Europe...) ;)

[tluyben2]

Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Munchen, Madrid, Barcelona London (for now), hell even Malaga are tech friendly and much easier (in my experience, but that is totally a matter of taste: I find Swiss too stiff) to settle. Really wondering where you are from.

Edit: fixed Barcelona

[kriro]

Interesting. I never had the feeling of not growing up in a tech friendly environment in Germany. It's traditionally geared a bit more towards machines than software but overall I think fairly tech friendly/open. Maybe it depends on the specific region.

Entrepreneurship is another issue, I feel like "failing" had and still has an overly negative connotation here.

[ovi256]

>where technology is not overwhelmingly debated about in a negative light

Was this really true for the place you grew up ? It sounds so luddite.

[countryqt30]

I live in Zurich and attended ETH, thousands of bright people! :D

[igk]

Can I ask you for details about your background? I grew up in central Europe and never experienced what you seemed to have experienced

[chrisper]

Where are you living now?

[planetjones]

A good sign of commitment by Google to their Zurich office - recently the Swiss papers had stories of Google looking towards building their London office, due to limitations in acquiring work permits for staff in Switzerand. This news somewhat contradicts it; Zurich really is an attractive location for talent to flock toward.

[delroth]

Google secured 5 new buildings in a very nice location in Zürich at the end of 2014: http://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/google-zieht-an-die-europaallee-1....

This article says this is enough space for 5000 more employees.

[spacecowboy_lon]

Zurich attractive? - I though it might be Google hedging its bets in the event of Brexit.

Though Cranfield CIT and half way between Oxford and Cambridge woudl have been another good choice. - they could even have taken RAF Twinwoods over as a site for a DC as it has a direct link to the Grid.

[anonymousDan]

I wonder what kind of impact brexit had on their decision. Presumably not much since Switzerland is outside the EU anyway.

[moondowner]

I guess ETH Zurich and EPFL are the reason why Google chose Switzerland "Europe is home to some of the world’s premier technical universities, making it an ideal place to build a top-notch research team"

[seanmcdirmid]

Many of the workers in Google Zurich are not Swiss or Swiss university graduates. I mean, there are surely a lot, but they are europe-wide offices. All of Google Russia went there, I think.

[tomp]

I'd guess the main reason is low tax on salaries, and less competition from finance than e.g. London.

[amelius]

I would rather see Europe monetize their own tech instead of some US company.

[dharma1]

Would be great if the next Google/Facebook/Microsoft was European and HQ'd in Europe, but it's hard to see that.

ML anecdotes - Schmidhuber makes a point of how LSTM was developed on European taxpayer's dime. Backpropagation was invented by Esko Linnainmaa (a Finnish researcher) in the 70s.

Universities or startups can't compete with finance/Google/FB level compensation, so that's where a lot of the bright minds go.

[Buetol]

I love how they throw in a link to picasa instead of google photos. Anyway, this is really good news with the EPFL and ETH next to it, it's perfectly placed next to the core research centers of Europe.

[igk]

Also close enough to Germany(hours with a train/bus from TUM)to hoover up the bright minds from there.

And then there is France (polytechnique) and the rest of Europe...

[tormeh]

Anyone know why so many tech/pharma companies have research/development departments in Switzerland? It sounds expensive and not very centrally located.

A young company where I live have HQ in Switzerland, but that's just a post box and some servers for tax reasons. The are so few people working there it's negligible.

[jedberg]

This is great, I'm glad that they are tapping into the many very smart Europeans who aren't willing to leave Europe to work in the states.

That being said, I'm pretty sure this is almost an entirely tax based move. By doing this, they now have a way to spend a bunch of the money they have "stranded" in Europe.

[s3nnyy]

I definitely see the reasons behind this move. The computer vision department at ETH is particularly strong and that spills over to industry as well. There is Fashwell, a startup that is doing pretty well and they do ML / computer vision quite extensively.

Also, the ML meetup in Zurich has 2000 members, which is a lot for a small town like Zurich (http://www.meetup.com/Zurich-Machine-Learning/).

Salaries are huge (7000 CHF - 12.000 CHF after taxes) and the living standard is very high. I am well-connected in the tech-scene in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and need support, send me a message (e-mail is in my HN-handle). Disclosure: I am a tech-recruiter.

[wehadfun]

Is that a dog?

[dominotw]

>This really makes me consider moving my family to Zurich.

If you immigrate to America you can become an American. You can shop till you drop, eat mc donlads, celebrate 4th of july and call yourself an american.

This can not be said for any other country. In Germany you will always be an "immigrant", maybe if your kids are white and young enough to pick up the language maybe they can become invisible. But for anyone else it impossible to become german, dutch ect. I don't mean any of it in a negative way, btw.

[jpatokal]

"Any"? Try telling that to (say) Canadians, Australians, South Africans, Singaporeans...

[dang]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11915218 and marked it off-topic.

[ulfw]

Completely disagree on that.

Lived ten years in California. Studies, Green Card etc. Could have gone for citizenship, but didn't. I was never seen as an American. Ever. Not even a little bit. I was always 'the German'.

Almost every coffee shop, restaurant, super market, you name it I got asked where I am from or where my accent is from.

No. It is not cute. It reminds you you are NOT one of them.

[SmellTheGlove]

Very good point. I'm born in the US from an immigrant family, grew up here and all, but have US and Italian citizenship. I go to Italy pretty regularly and it's debatable whether most there actually consider me Italian, because I grew up in a different culture. That view might not even change if I were to go live there indefinitely. And to some extent I agree, or at least can see where that comes from. And I look like anyone else over there, speak a couple of dialects in addition to standard italian, etc. Now it doesn't mean you're necessarily treated poorly, but your cultural identity will always be something else. It's not as though no one will talk to you or be your friend. but it's different than the US where you can show up, declare yourself American, and pretty much have it stick.

[namelezz]

> call yourself an american.

Sure you can call yourself whatever you want but whether or not you being treated as an american is a different story. I know several immigrants who get yelled by the local people to "go back to your country." US immigrants still suffer from loneliness like other immigrants too.

[Aoyagi]

Yeah, surely this isn't a move to get some EU funding... And to provide a base for the massive lobbyist team in Brussels.

[kamakazizuru]

1) Why do you think Google needs EU funding for their research ? Last I checked they had one of the largest cash reserves outside the US - which means a lot of it is in the EU, if anything this is a way to smartly spend that cash rather than get taxed repatriating it.

2) The lobbyists can be based in Brussels, Zurich isn't that close to Brussels anyways!

[secure]

Switzerland is not even in the EU — I think being in the EU is a prerequisite for any EU funding, though :).

[wbhart]

I wonder if this is because Google is having trouble recruiting people to the US, due to the crazy political system there, or because of visas or because of people with concerns about surveillance, gun control, the death penalty, lack of whistleblower protections, etc.

[geodel]

Or it could be just because they want distributed teams with multicultural talent in different timezones.

[chrisper]

It's (probably) cheaper to open an office in an area where people are willing to work in tech than to try to move the talent. Believe it or not, not everyone wants to move to the US and leave friends and family behind.

[spacecowboy_lon]

why would they do that when they can get their pick of european talent and pay them 50% less than they would in SV