Google wants to get into mobile apps

GOOGLE IS putting together a major team to develop mobile phone apps judging from the jobs it is advertising on its site. And one of the teams will be based in London.

There's at least ten jobs up for grabs and one of them is for a Strategic Partner Development Manager.

The job description gives it away because this manager needs to co-ordinate with "Google's online and wireless partners - access providers, portals, mobile operators - across the region."

The region being EMEA, of course.

But the spec for a Technical Lead Manager is just as intriguing. This person should be able to "design, build and support client applications on mobile platforms, including Symbian, Palm, Java, and Microsoft Smartphones."

Interestingly another of the job ads mentions Linux, so Google probably intends to have that platform covered as well.

What exactly is this person supposed to be building? The INQ first thought was email but that isn't mentioned.

Some of the areas which are mentioned are predicatble - such as "information retrieval algorithms" and "a variety of new search products."

But what's this ... "Large-scale cluster computing"? What has that got to do with mobile apps?

This isn't the first time that a Google job ad has helped spill the beans. It advertised for wireless engineers before and that helped create the buzz around the Gphone.

Whatever Google is up to, it's a big project alright. µ

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