Google aims to train and hire more tech talent from Taiwan, according to analysts. This move follows the data center Google built in the island in 2013.
After five years, Google recruited more than 2,000 engineers in Taiwan as part of its purchase of the majority of HTC’s smartphone design division. The acquisition was worth $1.1 billion.
Google made an announcement in the same year about hiring 300 more people in Taiwan and training 5,000 students in artificial intelligence.
Today, analysts say that Google aims to train more tech talent from Taiwan, hire them, and help the country advance its digital tools.
According to analysts, Google remains interested in Taiwan because of its relatively low-cost, but well educated force for research and development in Asia. Taiwan is also considered a shelter from the U.S.-China trade war as well as safe from government inquiries into proprietary technology.
“Many of these reasons go back to the same issues, like security in terms of U.S.-China trade relations and using the best mix of available resource and still sort of gaining a presence and maintaining a presence in this part of Asia,” says Tony Phoo, Taipei-based senior East Asia economist at Standard Chartered.
Training, hiring students
Moreover, Google included Taiwan in a Ph.D. fellowship program in May that provides $10,000 stipends and training for computer science students.
In April, Google said it would place 8,000 university graduates in Taiwan under training. The tech giant aims to boost “digital power” on the island which has been recognized a hardware hub for decades, based on local media reports.
Moreover, those trainees will be a part of Google’s digital talent exploration program. They will receive certification in Google digital marketing tools.
“We’ve been investing in Taiwan’s talent for many years,” says Tina Lin, Google’s Taiwan general manager.
“This year we embarked on a program to train 8,000 fresh grads to give them the kind of digital marketing skills that we’ve heard companies really need to support them in their digital transformation journey," she added.
Google plans to hire trainees, says Song Seng Wun, an economist in the private banking unit of CIMB in Singapore. “Many will be employed by Google,” he says. “The rest can still be connected back to the company in the future.”
Google hopes to employ from the talent pool of Taiwan for product and service development.
Digital tools
The company also aims to promote digital tools to the country's B2B and B2C market through the training, certification and software development, according to Stephen Su, general director of the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center at the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan.
“Taiwan has a large base of hardware engineers and industries which can complement Google [and] which require closer integration of software and hardware,” Su says, citing AI and robotics as examples.
Google is seeking a relatively cost-efficient and safe base in Northeast Asia, says Standard Chartered’s Phoo. Japan and South Korea have higher costs compared to Taiwan. In addition, the island has established the stability of power supplies in the past two years, he adds.
Taiwan can provide more affordable labor and rent while “turning out excellent engineers to feed a decades-old, globally-recognized electronics contract manufacturing industry and chip industry,” says Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based IT research firm Marbridge Consulting.
