David A. Utter      2006-01-06

After purchasing a small technology firm based in Waterloo, Ontario, Google has decided to expand its presence by adding more staff in Waterloo.

While fellow Waterloo corporate resident Research In Motion spent much of 2005 locked in a life-or-death patent battle with NTP, the new tech firm in town enjoyed vast profits, a soaring stock price, and endless media coverage that was mostly positive.

2005 was good to be Google, and even better for Reqwireless, a wireless technology company in Waterloo that Google quietly purchased in the summer of 2005. Canada.com reported on the activities following the deal, and recounted a comment from Google:

Google has been particularly active in Waterloo, recruiting college graduates for its Googleplex. Now the company has begun making efforts to keep some of those recruits at home.

The report cited a call for engineers posted on Google's job site, for Waterloo. Lots of programming skills with an emphasis on mobile handsets figure prominently in the posting.

A professor who commented in the story about Google's appeal summarized the perception of working for the search advertising company versus Microsoft:

"When you go to Google, you can believe you're engaged in a great mission," Larry Smith, an adjunct professor of economics with the University of Waterloo, said.

"For young people, the best of them want a mission. Designing a bell to add onto [Microsoft's] Xbox; does that sound like a mission to you? Young people are also attracted to what they assume to be the great competitive struggle between Google and Microsoft."

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