Google Confirms Their Plan for Indonesian Office

Google finally confirm that they’re opening their office in Indonesia before 2012. Stated by Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt during his meeting with Indonesia’s VP Boediono in Jakarta. Vice President’s spokesman Yopie Hidayat, as quoted by Kompas, explained that Google would like to develop their business by  leveraging small medium enterprises from Indonesia with foreign buyers like what Google did in China. For Google, this is a stretegic step to support their advertising business.

After this meeting, Google’s representatives will work together with Ministry of Communications and Informatics in order to build an MOU as a base for Google’s operations in Indonesia. Several high-positioned Googlers from US has been visiting Indonesia for the past few months to meet with local politicians and discussing on operation-related matters.

There has been rumors about Google opening their office in Indonesia after Singapore and Malaysia last January, and after Indonesia it is also rumored that Google’s heading to Thailand. We also did a post on why companies like Google doesn’t really need to setup their office in Indonesia, but it’s always fun to see Google’s office in downtown Jakarta.

My guess is that Google Indonesia’s office will focus on their advertising business on their AdSense and AdWords platform, and of course they’ll be needing lots of Sales and Marketing resources. I’m guessing they won’t be needing much engineers here because their localized products already run well even without them being in Indonesia, such as Google Voice Search in Indonesian language. In the mean time, Google Indonesia consists of a few people working remotely from their homes and reporting to Google Singapore office.