Google Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin said Wednesday that some new features on the world's top search engine and other services will come from its research center in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where they are on a hiring spree.
"One approach we are taking is that Bangalore is where we run a mirror exactly of what we have in the United States in terms of development," Brin told reporters in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state.
Page and Brin said they were visiting India looking for "extraordinary talented entrepreneurial people who want to make a big change in the world."
Researchers in Bangalore will work with their counterparts in Google's U.S. offices to conceptualize new services and develop software, they said.
This includes developing search engines that will present results based on speech input or drawings, ones that will work in more languages than at present, personalizing search results to suit individual preferences, and new features for Google's new e-mail service, they said.
Google set up offices in the southern Indian cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad earlier this year. Brin said Google was in fact "too late" in tapping Indian talent.
"We would have preferred to do it sooner. But there are only so many things we can do at once. It is a fast growing business," he said.
Their comments came in Bangalore, their third stop in India, after New Delhi and Hyderabad earlier this week.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, runs an Internet business that revolves around its search engine -- which covers 4.3 billion Web pages.
During their low-key visit, the two shopped in New Delhi's Connaught Place, rode in a three-wheel motorized rickshaw in Hyderabad and spent time like a "couple of sophomore backpackers doing India," the Times of India said.
They also called on Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
Krishna Bharat, who created Google's news service, is now busy hiring in Bangalore. "We don't have a cap (on how many to hire). We will take in as many people as we can, if they meet our global standards," he said.