Google to open office in Indonesia

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman at Google, reportedly unveiled the plan during a meeting with Indonesian vice president Boediono last week. Schmidt is visiting Bali in Indonesia for the Global Entrepreneurship Programme Indonesia and the Regional Entrepreneurship Summit.

A spokeperson for Google said the Internet-based services and products developer hoped to expand its business in Indonesia through increasing the platform that connects small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with foreign buyers.

This plan would be similar to Google's China strategy, in which Google saw advertising sales skyrocket once its local office was in place.

Google is currently in discussions with Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information to set up businesses in Indonesia. It is looking to seal a memorandum of understanding with the government as the foundation of this expansion.

Indonesia is known to have the largest number of Twitter users and Facebook members in the world. The number is expected to keep growing as internet penetration in the country is still below 20%, currently.

In June last year, the annual Net Index Study 2010 by Yahoo stated that Indonesia saw a 48 per cent growth in internet use last year. This was due to an increase of internet usage through mobile and accessing print materials online.

Provincial cities in Indonesia are also ‘leapfrogging’ from home-access to mobile internet access, according to the study.