Youthful staff enjoy campus atmosphere of Dublin HQ

The Google buildings on Dublin's Barrow Street must be as good as it gets in terms of the brave new globalised Ireland.

There are currently something in the region of 800 people working for Google Ireland. Most are in their 20s and early 30s and have a relaxed attitude towards sartorial elegance.

The lobby of the building, where the company yesterday announced its intention to take on a further 500 staff, has a constantly shifting image from Google Earth playing on the wall, and you can even sit in a leather lazy-boy chair and press a button to activate your chosen massage.

In the building next door, where most of the work is carried out, the company boasts staff from 40 nations who between them speak 40 languages. The lingua franca is English.

Dublin is "the Ellis Island of the 21st century", according to Cork-born John Herlihy, Google Ireland's European director of online sales and operations. This makes it an ideal location for Google's globalised operations, he says.

In truth it is extraordinary. Google has a policy of trying to replicate a campus atmosphere. It's more college library than college bar, although on one floor there's a football table beside the lifts, and on the next what looked like a Scalextric set.

The open-plan offices have the quiet hum of work being done on screen. At one workstation, Catherine (23) from Versailles, France, is working on the website of a French kosher supermarket. Google drafts potential changes to such advertisement sites and offers suggestions.

Catherine, a marketing graduate from a French American college, was working in Poland when she applied for the Google job in Dublin. She's been here a year and a half and has no plans to move on. "I like Dublin, it's very different. I like the international community you have here."

Asked what the worst thing about the city is, she answers: "The price of accommodation. Though the salaries go with it. It's easy to live here. Everyone is friendly."

The technical department has more of a campus atmosphere. One workstation is occupied by a small pop-up tent. Another boasts a case of beer and a half-drunk bottle of wine. The staff seem to be all male.

"We write software and perform maintenance," says Dave O'Connor (27), a senior systems administrator.

He is a computer applications graduate from Trinity College Dublin and looks the part, with long hair, a black T-shirt and jeans.

His job is to ensure Google's servers don't fail. He never sees the servers and their location is a secret.

"I came from a small start-up two years ago. I was one of the first site-reliability guys here. I'm certainly not planning on leaving," he says.