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Google opens sales centre in city
Hyderabad, Oct. 12:
Google, Inc, the world's largest Internet search engine company, launched its online sales and operations centre in Hyderabad on Tuesday. The centre will also focus on human resources functions, Google's co-founders and presidents, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, told reporters here.
They said Google will be expanding the Hyderabad centre, which will serve as a support centre for the company's worldwide advertising clients.
However, both Brin and Page declined to discuss either Google's investment in the Hyderabad centre or its research and development centre in Bangalore. The two men, who co-founded Google in 1998, will be in Bangalore on Wednesday for the inauguration of the R&D centre there.
"Google's AdWords adver tisers and AdSense publishers throughout the world will receive seamless online sales service and support in their local time from the team in Hyderabad," a Google release said. "Engineers hired into the Google Hyderabad engineering centre will mirror Google's other engineering offices, with the same scope of work, hiring standards and Google culture. They will be part of a worldwide effort to create the best search experience for Google users and can expect to tackle some of the most interesting challenges in computing today," it added.
Asked whether Google, which listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market in August with a $2.7 billion initial public offering, would be offering stock options to its employees in India, Brin said the company was planning compensation packages which would be similar to stock options. Brin indicated that Google planned to introduce search services in more Indian languages. The search engine currently offers services in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil. He said the Bangalore centre would be involved in product development.
Antoine Colaco, operations manager for the India Online Sales, Google had chosen Hyderabad because of the technology-literate Englishspeaking population, a competitive economic environment and good infrastructure.
Oh and they seemed to love the CNG (compressed natual gas) buses and autorickshaws :)
Sheer Misconception and a perfect instance of ignorance.
I saw their(Co-founders) pictures in our local papers today , ofcourse they are having a ball of time riding in Autorickshaws.
I am sure they must have had Hyderabadi Biryani( A Local cuisine)
Well we(Hyderabad) are on our way guys , We are improving, I know some of you might have compliants about its beauty or cleanliness, but we sure are improving in the right direction.
With Google, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Infosys, Wipro and few more giants of the world setting shop in our pearl city it's a wonderfull time to be in hyd.(short form for Hyderabad)
Ofcourse they cant all be wrong abt infrastructure ,English or Skill of local residents here :).
Aravind :)
>Sheer Misconception and a perfect instance of ignorance.
You're obviously not from the UK and having to tolerate incredibly bad VOIP mostly from banks and certain mobile phone companies.
The services are appalling.
Some banks no longer issue UK phone numbers, only a local rate number which goes through to an Indian call centre operated by people who can hardly understand the English language.
I was informed only the other day by an operator that he would disocnnect the call if I continued using profane language!
The profane language?
I said their service was "garbage"...good grief, that's training?
I've already looked at using alternative services since this is not my idea of service. The only gainers from this are the shareholders and chairman who reap their bonuses and say screw the users.
And before being accused of being xenophobic, I have had a factory in India for 30+ years and employ 7,500 and they are wonderful people, it is the application of this technology which is badly executed.
Though things are on nascent stages still BPOs, Call Centers etc. have been successful in India so far.
Hydrabad being the top IT Hub.
Nobody can have a solution for the Accent of Indian English! Imagine when Indians call US/UK and find people speaking Cranky English with several turns twisted Tongue, they too feel that its not worth spending on listening to Garbage.
Anyway,
Google has done what it felt "Financially feasible". Lets hope Hydrabad ppl. soon learn to spea with Several Turns Twisted Tongue too!
If they do realise this then they must have already built-in a very large percentage customer loss factor since specific banks in the UK are losing customers in droves simply because they cannot contact their local branch direct.
Using India/Asia seems to be creating total absolution for any problems created by the move resulting in so-called customer service being at the most basic level with no one available to offer assistance, help nor constructive advice.
It is absolutely pitiful and is it not surprising that one major UK bank has noticed this and is exploiting it extremely successfully?
Whilst I would agree that some regional accents are difficult to understand that is no different for any English speaking country which is considering locating there.
I shall repeat again that it is the application of this technology which is badly executed, no more, no less.
Hydrabad being the top IT Hub.
Not when Bangalore is around :)
Our Motto "Do No Evil" (we don't consider outsourcing our support overseas so we can pay people peanuts evil).
Wow...didn't take google long to mold itself right into the corporate culture.
Not when Chennai's smart people are alive :)
Anyway i think most of the support from the offshore facility will be email based and i think its a great idea that too considering the constant complaints about the lack of good support from google (adwords or adsense!)
I have nothing against the people of the country, but it is very hard to get support from someone who speaks broken English and will have very little knowledge of what I need done. Google can fatten their wallets even more though.
"The Brits complaining about bad "VOIP" - lots of irony in that one."
Us Brits only have Shakespeare and Milton & et. al to fall back on.
So yeah - it was a good point.
[edited by: engine at 8:05 pm (utc) on Oct. 13, 2004]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]
The Brits can be credited (sic) with bringing English to India thanks to their colonization of the country. So when they complain about bad "VOIP", I guess they must share some blame.
Wow Wow Wow Wow
Well, googleplex is overwhelmed by Indians ... thats for sure! may be Google as such has some value built for India.
Speaking of call centers in India, did anyone see the segment on the Conan show a few weeks ago where he sent a guy to get his computer repaired by the person answering the phone in the call center in India? It was facinating in a way they never intended. His whole journey looks like a third world country until he gets to the call center which was fancier than any AOL call center (which are pretty darn nice) that I have been in around the USA. I sure hope their employees get the health insurance coverage that we did at AOL, but I suspect not.
All those poor programmers crying their eyes out that their $60,000+ jobs would leave (the US) and be replaced by poor quality, and coincidentally, cheaper Indian work. Well at least if they lose their job they will have time to work off some of that flab now :)
I actually remember one WebmasterWorld member posting [webmasterworld.com] in jest that the service from Adwords was so poor it was time to outsource it to India. Looks like Google had the same idea.
So if the service was so bad before, how can this be worse?
>Wow...didn't take google long to mold itself right into the corporate culture.
The new Google model is "Greed is good". Welcome to 2004.
This may simply be Google's moral guidance for the printing department in the US Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco.
All Indians dont speak broken English. I can actually vouch for the circle i move around with. Thay are very fluent, of course fluency according to you could mean knowing colloquial slangs. But then even that we are well versed in.
But about outsourcing to India, and call centres in India to service people very distant from us, I think, is a crying shame.
All around I see growth, except I dont think it is the healthy kind. A country must have control over its growth. We dont have. And infact I should not even call it economic growth, as it is just economic shiftment. Call centres are easy money here for people who can read the paper and speak enough English to order their own food in a restaurant abroad. There is no guarantee that this can be sustained, as anytime the MNC's decide some other country is cheaper or people here start asking for higher wages they are going to move. Then what do we do with these high raised buildings with their split air conditioners, fiber optic, computers, and interior designs when all around them India has not developed much and still people are riding the Bullock carts?
India is like a balloon being fed from outside. When what has been fed in is taken out later, we will realise that whats left is not that glittering.
If you want to argue about that, just answer me one question tell me some great Indian product that is used worldwide? Our bike technology is from outside, Our cars are from ourside. Forget about them maybe maybe you can name some software that has an Indian name to it?
Infosys? Thats a company. They develop but for the other companies to package and brand it theirs.
Sometime back there was a joke
An American builds a bike that can go faster than a chopper.
A Russian makes a plane that can go around the world in 1 hour (yeah in our jokes we credited a lot to the Russians as we were till '91 more inclined to their way)
They ask an Indian to do something to beat them. He asks for a days time. The next day the American and Russian find their products being sold in India with the label "Made in India".
Boy we have come a full circle from there.
Lots of my friends who work in a Call centre attending calls for a very reputable phone company in US consider Americans not that intelligent. Why? well coz when they say right click, they (foreigners) write 'click' on a piece of paper. I do try and tell them that unlike us Indians who are Jack of all trades, they are master in their one specialised trade trusting others to be as good as them when it comes to something else they want done. And to be honest lots of my friends do like hearing the American accent and dreaming of going there someday.
Technology is supposed to help the mass. Thats not true in India. Atleast it is not helping the mass here PRODUCE more. All economic activity should increase in the productivity of a nation. Life is so easy here for the lucky few that watch friends and listen to Eminem and ogle at the Hiltons, that all they have to do is speak a few words, try to placate persons over something that they really really dont understand (How the hell can you understand the local customs and problems when you have never been there and all you know about them is what you have seen on MTv), or just copy and paste a few codes.
Name me an Indian who has got a Nobel prize for any studies? Any research? invention? software? patents? And you really think that India is developing?
Sure, you make hay when the sun shines.
But i think it is foolishness to make hay when you could have been making something more non dependent on the Sun with a little more effort.
So this is my 2 cents or rather 2 paise.
And please do forgive me for my Broken English :-)
I think the problem is that some UK people (myself included) have noticed a trend of decreasing customer service (and sometimes total lack of understanding) when a company outsources call center operations overseas.
But if service is "garbage", we look for other points of criticism, e.g. accent. If the issue is resolved in our favour, do we note that the CSR was in India, or do we just think that the "company" is great?
I have met Indian students in Australia who moonlight in call centres here and they occasionally get a customer who refuses to believe they are here. :)
Thanks for responding to my question about VOIP. You are the first person to do so. I said "Voices of Indian people" as a joke, in reaction to the assumptions in some posts. I'm guessing that VOIP actually means "Voice over Internet Protocol" but I really don't know.
In any case, please feel free to quote me!
I am an American who played cricket on the East Coast during and after my college years (long story, some other time...) which brought me into contact with a number of expats from India. And one thing I learned from that is that there is a HUGE and growing Indian middle class, of which most Americans and British are mostly unaware.
I am one of the ones who has NOT been unhappy with AdSense customer service, and I expect to continue to be reasonably satisfied with it once it has shifted to the sub-continent.
By the way, do you think India will be able to come back in the Second Test against Australia? They got pretty soundly beaten in the first....
Where has anyone been told Google is going to provide VoIP support to its customers worldwide? Who has told anyone Google isn't going to employ native people if they did intend to give VoIP support, remember English is not the only language that the Google Adwords customers speak, and I bet Google wouldn't risk an Indian speaking in French.
There is more to it now -
Said Larry Page: "We should have been here (in Bangalore) much earlier. Now that we are here, we will see how to steer this centre in our endeavour."
If you know the person, you can't simply sidestep that comment ;)
Mc
