Announcing Google Research, Europe

This really makes me consider moving my family to Zurich.<p>Looking back at growing up in Germany&#x2F;Europe made me really feel disadvantaged compared to people growing up in more tech friendly environments. I would want my child to grow up somewhere where technology is not overwhelmingly debated about in a negative light.<p>So much good stuff is coming out of ETH that it really seems to be a place where people talk more enthusiastically about tech in general.

A good sign of commitment by Google to their Zurich office - recently the Swiss papers had stories of Google looking towards building their London office, due to limitations in acquiring work permits for staff in Switzerand. This news somewhat contradicts it; Zurich really is an attractive location for talent to flock toward.

I guess ETH Zurich and EPFL are the reason why Google chose Switzerland &quot;Europe is home to some of the world’s premier technical universities, making it an ideal place to build a top-notch research team&quot;

I would rather see Europe monetize their own tech instead of some US company.

I love how they throw in a link to picasa instead of google photos. Anyway, this is really good news with the EPFL and ETH next to it, it&#x27;s perfectly placed next to the core research centers of Europe.

Anyone know why so many tech&#x2F;pharma companies have research&#x2F;development departments in Switzerland? It sounds expensive and not very centrally located.<p>A young company where I live have HQ in Switzerland, but that&#x27;s just a post box and some servers for tax reasons. The are so few people working there it&#x27;s negligible.

This is great, I&#x27;m glad that they are tapping into the many very smart Europeans who aren&#x27;t willing to leave Europe to work in the states.<p>That being said, I&#x27;m pretty sure this is almost an entirely tax based move. By doing this, they now have a way to spend a bunch of the money they have &quot;stranded&quot; in Europe.

I definitely see the reasons behind this move. The computer vision department at ETH is particularly strong and that spills over to industry as well. There is Fashwell, a startup that is doing pretty well and they do ML &#x2F; computer vision quite extensively.<p>Also, the ML meetup in Zurich has 2000 members, which is a lot for a small town like Zurich (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.meetup.com&#x2F;Zurich-Machine-Learning&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.meetup.com&#x2F;Zurich-Machine-Learning&#x2F;</a>).<p>Salaries are huge (7000 CHF - 12.000 CHF after taxes) and the living standard is very high. I am well-connected in the tech-scene in Zurich and if you&#x27;re thinking of moving here and need support, send me a message (e-mail is in my HN-handle). Disclosure: I am a tech-recruiter.

Is that a dog?

&gt;This really makes me consider moving my family to Zurich.<p>If you immigrate to America you can become an American. You can shop till you drop, eat mc donlads, celebrate 4th of july and call yourself an american.<p>This can not be said for <i>any</i> other country. In Germany you will always be an &quot;immigrant&quot;, maybe if your kids are white and young enough to pick up the language maybe they can become invisible. But for anyone else it impossible to become german, dutch ect. I don&#x27;t mean any of it in a negative way, btw.

Yeah, surely this isn&#x27;t a move to get some EU funding... And to provide a base for the massive lobbyist team in Brussels.

I wonder if this is because Google is having trouble recruiting people to the US, due to the crazy political system there, or because of visas or because of people with concerns about surveillance, gun control, the death penalty, lack of whistleblower protections, etc.