Washington: Google, the popular Internet search engine, has chosen India's Silicon Valley Bangalore for its first engineering research and development centre outside US to be set up next year.

"We just want more really great engineers", Google vice president of engineering Wayne Rosing told the 'Wall Street Journal'. "It's clear there are a significant number of really talented computer scientists in India."

He said Google hopes to hire about 100 engineers for its Bangalore centre, which would be the first of its type outside the US for the company based in California.

Google has been looking to expand the pool from which it selects employees with computer-science and engineering backgrounds, he said.

The company realised that it will be restricted in that goal if it requires those employees to work in the US, because many people cannot obtain work visas, he added.

Google has 21 sales offices around the world. It employees some 1000 engineers in its Mountain View headquarters and in Santa Monica, California, and in New York.

Rosing said the decision to move into India was not based on cost-cutting or outsourcing reasons. He added Google employees were willing to spend "significant time" in India and identify and train new recruits in the Google search code base.

The Google executive also said he had been impressed by Indian officials during tours of various Indian cities.

"It's clear India is going to be a major player," he said.

PTI