By Zsarlene B. Chua, Reporter

TECH giant Google LLC is opening its first operations center in the Philippines, which will provide support for its users and customers in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, as well as the Philippines.

A Google spokesperson said the company has traditionally relied on operations teams to provide customer support, and used third party suppliers.

“This worked well when we were smaller [but] like other companies, we now see the need to build out our customer support center,” the Google spokesperson told BusinessWorld.

Google follows the example of investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co. which operates a Global Service Center in the Philippines.

The tech giant’s operations center, which is scheduled to open by the first half of 2019, seeks to employ a core team of “about 40 people.”

The Google spokesperson said the company expects to “hire increasingly by hundreds and then thousands as we build it out.”

The operations team, which Google calls operations specialists, will provide support ranging from troubleshooting issues to advertiser assistance for its products including YouTube ads, Google Pay, Google Wallet, Google Hardware and Google Maps, among others. Google Pay and Wallet are services available outside Philippines.

The Google spokesperson said the Philippines was chosen as the location of its first operations center because the company believes they “can find the best talent for the work that need to be done” here.









