Bangalore: Google Inc, the world's largest search engine, has opened its high-end research and development centre in Bangalore.

"We gave Google the approval a couple of weeks ago and they have already taken up space in the city to begin their operations," Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) director B V Naidu said today (May 6, 2004).

The Government-owned STPI provides satellite-linked datacom services to IT firms and incubate start-ups.

Naidu said Google is planning to invest a substantial sum of money in the centre, but declined to specify the amount.

The global web-search technology firm is also setting up a customer support centre in Hyderabad.

The India centre will be headed by a three-member team, including Krishna Bharat, Google's principal scientist, Antoine Colaco, Manager, and Narayanan Shiva Kumar who will relocate themselves from Google's headquarters at Mountain View, California in the US.

The centre, which will mirror Google's other offices, will undertake projects in data mining, data warehousing, business intelligence and knowledge management.

Google was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, students from Stanford University and is coming out with an initial public offer to raise about $ 2.7 billion, which has become a sensation in the US.

The other Stanford university incubated internet start up Yahoo! already has a R&D centre here.