Google Acquihires Get the job done Chat Startup Pie To Create Engineering Group In Southeast Asia

[ad_1]

Google currently declared that it is building its very first engineering workforce devoted to Southeast Asia, and the search giant has gobbled up Pie, a Slack-like workforce communications service based in Singapore, to kick begin factors.

Pie, which lifted $one.two million in funding final yr led by Gree Ventures, is the very first acquisition Google has produced in Southeast Asia. The startup offers an organization chat app that assists groups communicate with no electronic mail. Its 9-particular person workforce will changeover to Google in full and the Pie chat service will be shuttered.

The acquisition was undisclosed — both Pie founder and CEO Pieter Walraven and Google declined to comment on the value of the offer.

Pie’s standard premise is was extremely significantly like Slack — and a host of other, better funded rivals in Asia like Eko and ChatWork — and it tried to differentiate itself by concentrating on a extremely basic experience focused at non-technical companies. We experienced heard not too long ago that Pie was in the method of raising new funding — it seems, then, that factors experienced turn into challenging enough for an exit to Google to be the most attractive way to progress.

The offer, which is an acquihire, has been produced to raise a new Google workforce that will aim on creating products for Southeast Asia in the same way that Google has accomplished in India about the earlier yr. We’re viewing some of the fruits of Google’s community endeavours there — it is rolling out absolutely free WiFi on the country’s railways, has made dedicated apps, opened a YouTube production studio, and added offline options to Youtube — and we can anticipate comparable things in Southeast Asia, a location which is property to more than 600 million people.

In conjunction with this offer, Google declared that it is hiring engineers and contemporary graduates to be a part of its new device. It also opened a new internship system for present-day learners, who are being made available the probability to devote twelve months at its Sydney business in Australia.

Last but not least, Google put a phone out to present staffers in the U.S. who want to ‘come home’ to Singapore or shift to the metropolis-condition. The firm will maintain an party at its Mountain Check out on March eight with more details — which is strictly for present staff, however.

Caesar Sengupta, who is vice president of Google’s “Next Billion Users” workforce, explained in a website submit that the firm requirements to localize its workforce to replicate the many dissimilarities in Southeast Asia:

The computing experience for most of these very first-timers, coming on the net in places like India, Indonesia and the Philippines, is extremely various from the just one many of us grew up with — and not the just one that most of Google’s providers ended up originally developed for. Their primary (and in most cases, only) “computer” is a minimal-value smartphone. Connectivity is high priced in relation to incomes, and frequently patchy – web-sites, maps and in particular video clips can take minutes to load and often time out. And for many, there is just not enough pertinent content material obtainable in their language.

These aren’t easy difficulties to repair, but we’d like to do a better task of addressing them. That is why we’re building a new engineering workforce in Singapore – to get nearer to the future billion people coming on the net and to create products that will get the job done for them.

Southeast Asia, which when seemed like a component of the world overlooked by tech companies, is viewed as an area with huge potential thanks to rising smartphone sales and superior World wide web exercise. Twitter, Google and Fb are among the international firms that have workplaces there, and the location is more and more interesting to tech companies and startups in China and India that seek out overseas expansion possibilities.

Showcased Picture: KYTan/Shutterstock

Read Far more In this article

[ad_2]
Google Acquihires Get the job done Chat Startup Pie To Create Engineering Group In Southeast Asia
-------- First 1000 businesses who contacts http://honestechs.com will receive a business mobile app and the development fee will be waived. Contact us today.

‪#‎electronics‬ ‪#‎technology‬ ‪#‎tech‬ ‪#‎electronic‬ ‪#‎device‬ ‪#‎gadget‬ ‪#‎gadgets‬ ‪#‎instatech‬ ‪#‎instagood‬ ‪#‎geek‬ ‪#‎techie‬ ‪#‎nerd‬ ‪#‎techy‬ ‪#‎photooftheday‬ ‪#‎computers‬ ‪#‎laptops‬ ‪#‎hack‬ ‪#‎screen‬