Google to set up shop in SA

15 August 2006

The world’s most popular search engine is planning to open an office in South Africa.

Business Day reported on Tuesday that Google Inc was advertising on its website for a country business manager and two sales positions based either in Cape Town or Johannesburg.

“If the largest player in the world is opening up a full-scale office in SA, it’s good for everyone,” Mark Buwalda, MD of Ananzi, South Africa’s most popular search engine, told Business Day.

The Nasdaq-listed company, headquartered in Silicon Valley, California with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, is busy expanding its global presence – and growing its international workforce at a rapid rate.

On a worldwide basis, Google employed 7 942 full-time employees as of 30 June 2006, up from 6 790 at the end of the March quarter, and from 5 680 at the end of 2005.

One of the five most popular sites on the internet, Google and is used by millions of people around the world – more than half of them from outside the US.

Google South Africa

Google has been taking its South African market seriously for some time now. Since the launch of Google’s SA-specific site on 14 January 2005, all computers with a South African IP (internet protocol) address have been redirected to www.google.co.za when searching on www.google.com.

Google.co.za also offers searches in four of South Africa’s 11 official languages (besides English), namely Afrikaans, Sesotho, isiXhosa and isiZulu.

As well as the language options, there is also the option to limit your search to the South African web only.

Google currently offers 112 country-specific sites and 117 interface languages.

(These include such “languages” as Bork, bork, bork! (“Ee’m Feeleeng Loocky”), Elmer Fudd (“I’m Feewing Wucky”), Hacker (“EyE Am ph33|1n6 |u(ky”), Laothian (“ກຸ່ມສົນທະນາຕ່າງໆ”) … and Pig Latin (“I’mway Eelingfay Uckylay”).)

SAinfo reporter