Google to Open Mich. R&D Center

Google, the world’s leading search engine, is expected on Tuesday to announce that it will open a new office and R&D center in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area that is to house some 1,000 Google employees, The New York Times reports.

The news comes from sources who were made aware of the plan on Monday.

Mich. Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm is set to make the announcement on Tuesday morning at a news conference at the state Capitol, according to the Times.

The search giant is expected to open the new facility in Ann Arbor’s downtown area, where the University of Michigan is located, the Times reports. Larry Page, a Google founder, attended the university for an undergraduate engineering degree, and Google is working with the school on a project to digitize all the volumes in its libraries, according to the Times.

Last year, it was reported that Google was looking into building a new 240,000-square-foot facility, and that Ann Arbor was one of a small number of cities the company was interested in, the Times reports.

The majority of the Ann Arbor center’s space would be employed for a technology and call center, but roughly 40,000 square feet would be devoted to Page’s University of Michigan digitization initiative, according to the Times.

Google has been digging into its coffers recently and investing regularly. In 2006, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company plans to spend $1.5 billion on new operations facilities and on custom technology, the Times reports.

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