Google talk

Kamil Jach: Google has existed as a search engine in Poland for years, so why has the company waited until now to develop its physical presence here?

Artur Waliszewski: The mo-ment came when a lone interface was not enough. Some big customers need more - they can't plan their ad campaigns on their own, they require ideas, inspiration and consultancy. Their various needs are one of the reasons for the creation of this branch.

Michał Lorenc: From the very beginning Google considered itself to be a technological, international platform. The global strategy is young, however. Our bureau in the UK, for example, is just five years old.

The Russian branch is opening this year. What's next?

AW: You can expect a new Google office to appear almost anywhere. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is because we want to maintain our standards of service, recruitment and efficiency. At the moment we could hardly do anything without back-up from London, Dublin or the head office in California.

Many analysts claim that Google will enlarge the online advertising market in Poland. What are you doing to make it happen?

AW: I agree with this for two reasons. Our products are simple and very precise. Customers can easily keep track of how much they spend and how much they gain from them, so they can precisely plan future business strategy. This isn't so easy with some other forms of ads. The second reason is that our products are available for both giant firms and small companies.

Have you considered the possibility of another dotcom crash?

AW: Of course, you always have to be aware of what happened several years ago. But what happened in the second half of the 1990s was that the market bubble burst. Right now, I believe there is no bubble. Companies' futures are covered by their financial results and business models are more solid. Today's development of e-commerce is real, not a hoax.

What do you think of the Czech or Hungarian markets?

ML: According to some official rankings, we are number one in Poland, with more than 80 percent of the market share. But that's not the case in the Czech Republic.

AW: The market there is different. Czech portals focused on typical search services, whereas in Poland they looked at news, information and visual ads. Homegrown Polish search engines never gained ground.

ML: And Czech e-commerce has strong links with Germany, so it's much more developed than here.

AW: And the density of population is important too, for example in Hungary, where the majority of net surfers live in Budapest, logistics are simple. In Poland it doesn't work like that.

Is Google News managing to beat the information portals through the back door?

AW: No. It's a way of linking to a story's publishers. It's just a specialized search engine.

What about publishers' accusations that Google News and Google Book Search are breaking intellectual property laws?

AW: Google is only creating tools to aid interaction between customers and publishers, nothing more. Maybe we have threatened somebody's business. But what about Johann Gutenberg, who invented printing and destroyed business for scribes? Do people accuse him of anything? I think not.

ML: If books are copyrighted we only scan samples and link them to the publishers' websites where you can buy the book. We are not breaking the law.

How many people will Google Polska employ and will it handle only Polish customers?

AW: We will probably have more than a dozen [employees] by the end of the year. Our goal is to cooperate with Google's biggest customers who need consultancy regarding their business model. Other than that, we will cooperate with many small companies. We will focus on Poland.

Is the rumor true about locating a third Google data center in Kraków?

AW: Google intends to open data centers all over the world, especially in places rich in skilled IT specialists. So far I can neither confirm nor deny that it is going to be Poland.

Is Google creating its own operating systems?

AW: Google has been producing software but not similar to other companies' products. We do not intend to duplicate anybody's ideas and claim we can do it better. Maybe, you can combine these small things we have been creating, and maybe it will resemble an operating system, I can't say really.

Is Google creating it's own Internet Protocol network?

AW: There are often rumors on various subjects related to Google. I do not know anything about any IP network.

What do you think of the Polish IT workforce? Is Google pursuing the people who won TopCoder or other prestigious contests?

ML: Yes, they're already being headhunted, some have already been working in our bureaus.

AW: The problem is that there are too few of them. We need more people like that here.

Interviewed by Kamil Jach