Google Drive's India connection
Google recently announced their consumer cloud storage and sync service--Google Cloud. The product succeeds their online Docs suite and competes with Microsoft's SkyDrive and Apple's iCloud. At launch, Google India shared some details about what features were done in India. Google has four offices in India and two were involved in this major Google product. According to the update by Google India, Google offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad worked on several key features in the product.
Google India's corporate website states that the Hyderabad office has more than 800 employees and engineers have worked on products like:
- Gmail
- Calendar
- Docs
- Chrome among others
Google Bangalore on the other hand has worked on:
- Ads
- News
- Google Enterprise
- Regional products among others
Looking at the list, it seems obvious that Google had engineers from these offices work on Google Drive. As a product, Drive replaces Docs and Google launched the product for its Enterprise suite users as well. The Google Drive features that were worked upon in India are:
- Centralized Management tools (part of Google Apps)
- Security
- Billing Systems
The update says these features were not just developed but even conceptualized in India. These are integral features and say a lot about India's ability to deliver enterprise-level global products. Google Drive has three paid tiers and the Billing Systems for this have been done India. Given the importance of security in today's volatile environment, the product's security being done from India only goes to show the trust and capabilities of developers from India. As an organization, a lot of chief Googlers are Indians, some examples:
- Amit Singhal--Senior Vice President (according to Wikipedia he plays an integral role in Search)
- Sridhar Ramaswamy--Senior Vice President for Engineering
- Sundar Pichai--Senior Vice President for Chrome and Apps
- Vic Gundotra--Senior Vice President for Engineering (he's the company's face for Google+)
- Nikesh Arora--Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer