Google reveals extent of UK investment

Cloud giant appears not to be dissuaded from further UK investment by Brexit

Google has revealed increased investment in the UK, with new offices springing up around London, and a large recruitment effort already underway.

In a climate in which many firms are thought to be scaling back their UK operations due to continued uncertainty of the impact Brexit will have on the economy, Google has remained seemingly undeterred, with new offices opening recently in both Victoria and King's Cross.

Speaking at the launch of Google's new UK region in its cloud platform, Ronan Harris, Google's UK MD, said that his firm would "expand beyond 7,000 staff in the UK."

He also emphasised the UK's history of innovation.

"I like to remind my Californian friends that this is the home of innovation, from Ada Lovelace to Tim Berners-Lee," said Harris. "This is the world's most advanced digital economy, with 29 million workers using digital every day.

"This is the home of digital, and the home of digital innovation," he added.

Philip Beevers, head of Google's site reliability engineering function in the UK, also emphasised his firm's local investment.

"We're investing in a big campus in King's Cross," said Beevers, before citing all the well-known Google products to have been developed in the UK. "The engineering group here worked on the Google arts and culture app. Google assistant was built here in London. The system software and applications for Android Wear devices, was developed by the team in London."

Beevers also described the way his team functions, stating its mission as to keep Google's services reliable in the face of ever-increasing traffic.