Google Transit comes to Australia

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 18 March 2008 10:37

Your IT - Home IT

Noble added that "Google Transit was a 20 percent time project one of our engineers had an idea and it was develop from concept to project and is now a product."

Throughout Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing projects of their own choice. According to CEO Eric Schmidt, "things that interest them rather than what their bosses tell them to do." Schmidt, who also addressed the press conference, said: "almost all of the really really interesting products [in Google] have come out of 20 percent time."

Google Maps originated in Australia, with a company called Where 2 Technologies which was bought by Google in late 2004 and resulted in Google opening an office in Australia.