Official Google Blog: Google's newest venture

Google's newest venture

Today Google is excited to announce Google Ventures, Google's new venture capital fund. This is Google's effort to take advantage of their resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. By borrowing the best practices of top-tier, financially focused venture capital firms and bringing to bear Google's unique technical expertise and brand, Google thinks they can find young companies with truly awesome potential and encourage their development into successful businesses.

At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. Google will be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas Google hasn't thought of yet. Central to Google's effort will be their fellow Googlers, whom they view as a critically important resource to help educate them about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.

Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will. If anything, Google thinks the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the "next big thing," and Google will be working hard to find them. If you think you have the next big idea, or if you just want to to learn more, please see Google's website at www.google.com/ventures.