Google's Research and Development Center in Israel - with offices in Haifa and Tel Aviv - is the place to be for software engineers who want to develop the next-generation technologies and push the limits. Here, we build global products and innovate on a large scale.

Our engineers work on problems in a variety of areas including information-retrieval algorithms, massive scalability and storage solutions, and cool applications that enrich the user experience. We also work extensively on networking systems, advertising systems, and complex transaction systems in consumer applications. We are very proud of the key projects that were launched from our site (see a few examples below). Our teams are leading many projects as well as working with teams globally.

Below is a sample of some the areas we are working on:

• Search – We have teams advancing the Search experience, with projects including Google Autocomplete, Live Results (try searching for “weather tel aviv”, “goog”, or “mlb”), Google Related and more. The teams work closely with global teams on projects such as Google Instant.
• Analytics – We have teams working on technologies to analyze and visualize massive data sets and use the power of that data for the benefit of advertisers, website owners, scholars, and many other users. These include Google Insights for Search, Google Trends, Website Optimizer, Google Chart Tools, In-Page Analytics and more. The teams work closely with global teams on projects such as Google Analytics.
• Applications – We have teams working on backend technologies behind Gmail and other applications, as well as new advanced features (e.g. “got the wrong bob”). The teams work closely with global teams on projects such as Gmail Priority Inbox.
• Infrastructure Software – We are tackling some exciting technological challenges with unique algorithms in making one of the world’s largest networks work more effectively. While much of the work is behind the scenes, it helps driving the great experience users get from Google products.
• Special Projects – In addition to our already established efforts we incubate highly innovative projects in various disciplines. These include projects for emerging markets, projects that involve advanced computer vision technologies, and more. Some special projects were the seeds to some of the current big initiatives while others are kept as small but high-impact projects.

We encourage Googlers to spend 20% of their time on their own ideas. Projects resulted from 20% initiatives in Israel include YouTube Annotations (which is now used in YouTube clips) as well as our partnership with Yad Vashem to make their Holocaust archive accessible and searchable to a global audience. A few Googlers are spending their 20% time on high impact community outreach efforts; these include working with the developers community, leading programs encouraging high school students to consider science and technology, with particular attention to diversity (touching thousands of students to date), or teaching open source and web technologies at universities (for instance, classes given at Tel Aviv University).

Research

We seek new and innovative solutions to a variety of computational problems which arise from our engineering projects. Our research is focused on algorithms, machine learning, game theory, computer vision and data mining, however we also employ techniques from other branches of computer science. The fruits of research projects are often published in leading conferences and have an effect on Google's products and the industry at large. We also collaborate with the scientific community and support scientific research at the academia (for instance, our research initiative on auctions and market algorithms).