Google Romania, 15 years alongside Romanians!
Google Romania has marked its 15th anniversary of the start of its activity.
Ana-Maria Cononovici, 25.11.2025, 14:05
Google Romania has marked its 15th anniversary of the start of its activity, an office with a few employees, in November 2010. Its balance sheet mentions: Programs for students, entrepreneurs, NGOs and public administration, totaling more than 500 thousand students trained in digital marketing, programming, online safety and career development. The digital Workshop, with over 10 thousand entrepreneurs advised on business digitization and the use of AI technologies for productivity, almost 6 million USD allocated to NGOs for educational projects involving 1.5 million beneficiaries. And as the activities have constantly diversified, Google now represents a genuine innovation hub.
Elisabeta Moraru, Country Director of Google Romania, added examples of success from Google Romania’s activity: “Google for Start-ups is another example, because we wanted to constantly offer support to SMEs in Romania. We have provided courses and dedicated consultancy for over 10,000 such companies, offering specialized advice on how to digitize our business. In the last two years, the curricula has been updated with modules in the area of artificial intelligence, we have given a hand to our colleagues in the SME area to support their potential, so that new technologies, the AI Gemina module, should be an integral part of the way they manage to pivot to enter the new industry. Starting in 2023, Google Romania has partnered with the National Institute of Administration and we have run programs to educate the public administration staff in the field of artificial intelligence. Approximately 8,500 civil servants from Romania and the Republic of Moldova have participated in our sessions in the area of artificial intelligence, with the aim of increasing productivity and in relation to online safety and cybersecurity. We will continue these programs, because our goal is to support an economy that should use technology in a positive way.”
The natural, cultural and historical heritage has also been capitalized on thanks to the partnership between Google Maps and Google Arts and Culture, starting in 2010. Since then the information has been periodically updated with the Google car, or by bike, or by boat, or by cart, for example in the delta, or by tricycle, for Via Transilvanica. Elisabeta Moraru is here with details: “We had the chance to see extraordinary museums: the Brukhenthal National Museum, the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, the Astra National Museum, all of these have collections that have been digitized. You can also visit Peleș Castle, you can also go inside the Palace of Parliament, or you can see how the Romanian blouse is in the same collection compared to the creations of Jean Paul Gautier. You Tube. Less than three years after opening, we also launched the version in Romania. Since then and until now we are happy to say that YouTube has become one of the most important channels for your creativity, and the ecosystem of content creators has grown constantly. Maybe you had a child who studied for the baccalaureate exam, maybe you learned how to tie your tie, maybe you listened to a podcast or maybe you listened to music.”
As for the growth of YouTube Romania, let’s remember that in 2016 we reached the first Romanian channel with over one million subscribers, and the first diamond button, offered to channels that exceed 10 million subscribers, was offered in Romania in 2022, for LuluKids, which currently exceeds 60 million subscribers.
Patrick Warnking, Google’s vice president for Central and Eastern Europe, spoke about the importance of artificial intelligence for the region’s economic growth, emphasizing that one doesn’t need to be a specialist to use AI facilities: “Let’s talk a little bit about the future. We have heard of the last 15 years, but Romania actually has the opportunity to continue to grow as a strategic hub in Central Eastern Europe. Central Eastern Europe is the growth engine for Europe. It’s also the innovation and the talent engine for Europe. And AI might be the biggest opportunity actually for Romania to continue this success story and the growth engine in the coming years. Why is that? Romania has a very strong foundation in STEM education.( Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics). That is a very strong talent base. We see that the country is perfectly positioned to accelerate the digital transformation in the country and beyond. And we recognize this potential and I mentioned that we have invested over the last years and we continue to invest here. We have today 400 colleagues and it’s our strongest innovation hub for variables in all of Europe, Middle East and Africa. We believe AI is a transformational technology. It can bring meaningful and positive change. It will offer extraordinary breakthroughs. It can boost productivities across many industries.”
Andrei Muşat, Engineering Manager Google, added: “Today, Google Romania represents the largest development center for Wearable devices in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa). We deal here with development and innovation in many technological areas, including the development of operating systems, mobile applications, backing systems and many other areas, which my colleagues cover to develop these devices. I want to tell you about Pixel A 4, our newest device and, for us, it represents personal technology. It is a tangible result of the work done by our teams here.” (LS)
