Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Google confirms bi-coastal Google Ventures, led by Maris and Miner

By Galen Moore

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It is official: Google Inc. is launching a venture firm with offices in Cambridge and Mountain View, Calif.

Google Ventures, a venture capital division of the Internet search giant, will be headed up by California-based Burlee.com founder Bill Maris and Cambridge-based Android Inc. founder Rich Miner.

Miner has been working out of Google’s Cambridge office since the company’s 2005 acquisition of Android, an open-source mobile platform company.

Google announced its newest venture in a blog post Monday night, saying the new venture fund will focus on early-stage investments across a broad slate of industries, including consumer, Internet, software, clean tech, biotech and health care.

However, a Thomson Reuters wire service reporter first broke news of the new VC division last week, after spotting the Google Ventures company name on Miner’s name tag at a San Francisco conference.

The post did not indicate how much funding Google will allocate to the new venture division. A Google spokesman could not be reached Tuesday morning with questions about who, if anyone, will replace Miner at the head of Google’s Android division. The web address google.com/ventures lists offices in Mountain View and Cambridge, and it invites pitches via e-mail.

Google reported a profit of $4.2 billion on revenue of $21.8 billion for fiscal 2008.