Google is building a new 'digital innovation centre' in Dublin that will bring up to 15,000 extra overseas business visitors to the city each year.

The 15,000sq ft premises, called the Foundry, is Google's first such investment outside of the US and will be officially unveiled by the Taoiseach in September.

The Foundry is currently in the final stages of construction. It will host conferences and research gatherings for the staff of thousands of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) each year from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The new facility, which is located in its Gordon House building on Barrow Street in the docklands, contains a purpose-built 360-seat auditorium, meeting rooms, catering and broadcasting facilities. It also houses a Google merchandising store, its first outside of its Mountain View headquarters in California, although the shop will not be open to the public.

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Google declined to reveal the value of the investment, but the company has been working on the project for more than a year and it involved a complete redesign of a large section of the Liam Carroll-developed Gordon House.

John Herlihy, who heads up Google's Irish operations, told The Irish Times yesterday that the facility will operate as an "ideas factory" for small businesses.

Google will invite SMEs from across the EMEA region to participate in conferences and research events hosted by it. It will share with the businesses consumer-behaviour data and analysis mined from its website, and help them identify marketing trends and design digital marketing campaigns.

"We will essentially act as digital consultants for these companies. It is more or less a digital teaching facility and it is the first time we will have tried to do anything like this here," said Herlihy.

The centre has more than 70 conference bookings pencilled in for this year, following its September opening.

Google said there were 5,000 overseas visitors due to attend these events, in addition to attendees from Irish-based business owners and staff.

(CD/JP)