Home » Google celebrates 20 years in Switzerland

Google celebrates 20 years in Switzerland

Bussiness
00
by
November 25, 2024November 25, 2024
Google celebrates 20 years in Switzerland



Google celebrates 20 years in Switzerland

Keystone-SDA




Generated with artificial intelligence.

The American tech giant opened its first development office in Europe in Zurich in 2004.


This content was published on

Representatives from business and research fields, as well as Google representatives gathered to celebrate the company’s 20th Swiss anniversary at the company’s headquarters in Zurich on Monday. Google’s Swiss footprint began in April 2004 with two employees. Google Maps and YouTube did not exist and smartphones and cloud computing were still largely unknown, the company reminisced in a statement today.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Today the company’s focus is on research in artificial intelligence (AI), which offers new opportunities for society and the economy. The conveners also discussed potential, collaborations, and innovations within the local Swiss ecosystem: to date, 115 companies have been founded by former Google Switzerland employees, providing a total of more than 1,700 jobs.

More

More

How Google is driving up rents in Zurich




This content was published on



Rents for flats in Zurich, Switzerland’s business capital, are reaching stratospheric levels – one reason for this is Google’s international campus.



Read more: How Google is driving up rents in Zurich

The presence of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) was one of the main reasons why the company chose Switzerland as its development location two decades ago. Since then, the company has maintained a close exchange with the Swiss research institution, as well as its counterpart in Lausanne (EPFL)

“Google has woven strong ties with Switzerland,” said country director Christine Antlanger-Winter, quoted in the statement. “The local innovative fabric has always inspired Google. Close cooperation and interaction with our partners in science, education and industry are crucial for us,” she added.

Today Google Switzerland employs about 5,000 people. In the past year, however, the company has also cut its workforce in Zurich, as in the rest of the world. Google has never provided detailed figures but the media have reported hundreds of redundancies.

Adapted from Italian by DeepL/ac

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.