With high-profile tech companies like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) expanding offices in Vancouver, one might suspect Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is due to make its presence known on the West Coast.
Not so, says the managing director of Google Canada.
Vancouver might offer cheaper labour than the competitive Silicon Valley workforce and is much closer to the San Francisco Bay Area than Ontario, but the Internet giant has no plans to move here yet.
“Right now we’ve got offices in Toronto, we’ve got an engineering office in Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal, we have people in Ottawa,” Sam Sebastian said during a Q&A session following his 20-minute keynote speech for the Vancouver Board of Trade (VBOT) at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver June 2.
“Immediately, the plan is to continue to grow these areas, make sure that we aren’t growing too fast than we can manage.”
The executive, who’s been leading Google Canada for a year, spoke fondly of Vancouver at the beginning of his speech but said he only travels to the city about once a quarter.
“It’s a long flight out here so (establishing a Vancouver office) can solve some problems,” he said.
Throughout his address to the VBOT audience, Ohio-born Sebastian emphasized his appreciation for Canada’s ability to embrace diversity but said the country is often too slow to embrace change in terms of technology and business practices.
“This is a bad slow. There’s a more careful and deliberate approach sometimes that I’ve seen in the last year from folks that I’ve worked with here in Canada,” he said.
“This presents a pretty tough challenge in the business environment where the world is increasingly characterized by massive change…the whole world is being pushed out of its comfort zone.”
But Sebastian added Canada is “probably most well-positioned to be a leader” in the changing global economy based on the quality of its workforce as well as its diversity.
