Google Tokyo
Home to Googlers from diverse backgrounds seeking to make major impacts on the world of technology and business alike, Google Tokyo lets you bring your whole self to work. We work on core Google engineering projects as well as with sales clients in Japan, across the Asia-Pacific region and all over the globe.
Accomplishments
We’re Google’s first international office.
We’re home to hundreds of sales Googlers, as well as engineers who’ve worked in areas such as Search, Maps, Ads, YouTube, Chrome and Android.
We’re #1 on the Great Place to Work list of best workplaces in Japan for 2011 and 2012.
Stats
Number of Tokyo Googlers: About the same as the sum of the third perfect number and the natural log of one googol
Some of our conference rooms are named: Akihabara, Omi, Tampopo
Number of entries made to Person Finder in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan: 670,000
Address
Roppongi Hills Mori TowerPO Box 22, 6-10-1 Roppongi
Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-6126
Phone: +81-3-6384-9000
Inside Google Tokyo
Think bean bag chairs and a traditional Japanese aesthetic don’t mix? Think again. Our office in the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower (Tokyo’s fifth-tallest building, and home to the Mori Art Museum) is as Googley as they come. We’ve got table tennis, a pool table, a music room, an espresso bar – the works. Our office also features classic Japanese design elements that give it the feel of a traditional ryokan or sentō. On a clear day, we can see Mt. Fuji.
The Japanese touches continue in our cafeteria, where in addition to hosting meetings and events, we enjoy local specialties like curries, noodle dishes and sashimi (it’s Sushi Friday every Friday!) in addition to food from around the world. There is even a special tatami-style seating where you have to take off your shoes to eat.
More important than all that, though, is the work we do. Our engineers have worked on Search, Ads, Maps, Chrome, Google+ and Android – products that make huge impacts here at home in Japan and also benefit millions of users around the world. And our sales Googlers work with Japanese clients as well as with customers in other markets in the Asia-Pacific region, helping businesses grow and expand while also building Google’s business for the future.
Sound like your kind of workplace? Get in touch with us today.
We serve domestic users and advertisers, but also build global products and work on projects with Googlers around the world. It’s a great mix of Japanese culture and Google culture.
- Yuichiro Nagai, People Operations
Google Tokyo: Frequently Asked Questions
What kinds of people are you looking for to become Tokyo Googlers?
We’re looking for people who are smart and passionate, enjoy collaborating and know how to get things done, but don’t take themselves too seriously. On the engineering side, we’re looking for expertise in distributed systems, information retrieval, algorithms, user interfaces and big data and scalability.
Is there anything Google Tokyo is particularly proud of?
After the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, our entire office mobilized. Within two hours, we’d implemented Person Finder, which helped people locate loved ones during this anxiety-filled period of crisis when communication systems were disrupted. Also, in partnership with Honda, we showed which roads were drivable and which weren’t in real time online, valuable information for disaster survivors and rescue teams.
What do you do to make work more fun for Tokyo Googlers?
Beyond the game rooms and cafeterias, we sponsor awesome events, on- and off-site. We’ve hosted celebrities like Ryuichi Sakamoto, the J-pop group AKB48 performed for us and the choreographer for Perfume, another J-pop group, stopped by. In fact, a group of Googlers reenacted Perfume’s signature dance moves, much to the choreographer’s delight. Our Googlers also get to go on really cool off-sites with their teams – everything from horseback riding to our annual ski trip. Some of our engineers recently spent the weekend at a hot spring in Hakone, for instance, where they organized a hackathon.
Are you doing any important work with local developers?
We support developers and developer communities called GTUGs – Google Technology User Groups – all around Japan. We have eight GTUGs in Japan including the first women-only group. We also work with and support external expert developers, called Google API Experts, who are our external advocates who support product specific developer communities such as Android, Google App Engine, etc.
Do you do anything to help Tokyo Googlers assimilate to Google’s culture?
To work at Google, you have to be outspoken. So we offer teamwork training to help teach Googlers how to speak up and about strong workplace etiquette. We also provide business training on topics like making presentations and how to run effective meetings.
Are there any famous Googlers in Tokyo?
If you’re a software developer, you may have heard of Fumitoshi Ukai and Takuya Oikawa. Ukai-san is a Debian and Chromium developer, ex-president of the Japan Linux Association, VP and CTO of the Free Software Initiative of Japan, a contributor to the Go programming language, the author of Binary Hacks and Japanese translation supervisor of Code Reading, Code Quality and Write Great Code.
Takuya-san is an engineering manager and member of Hack for Japan, a series of online events supported by Google and other technology companies to develop services for the victims of the 2011 disasters in Japan.
