Photo credit: Robert Scoble
Is there something in the air? It’s the second surprise visit to Southeast Asia by a Google executive this month. Google CEO Sundar Pichai last week dropped nuggets of wisdom on a brief tour to Vietnam, and now Google co-founder Sergey Brin showed up in Indonesia more or less unannounced.
According to CNN, Brin had been on holiday in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat region, which is famous for its spectacular underwater world. Following that, he made a quick and very quiet trip to the capital, apparently for work purposes. He’s believed to have arrived in Jakarta this morning.
In Jakarta, Brin met with tourism minister Arief Yahya and tech minister Rudiantara.
The latter had met Brin and other Googlers on a trip to Silicon Valley in October. At that time, the pair agreed to make Eastern Indonesia a test site for Google’s Project Loon – an innovative attempt to bring low-cost internet to remote regions using high-altitude blimps.
The progress of Project Loon was one of the subjects discussed by Rudiantara and Brin at the meeting, but the Google exec also spent time praising Indonesia’s on-demand services startup Go-Jek.
“Players like Go-Jek already have a huge role. Google is very interested in also playing a role in this ecosystem,” said Brin according to CNN.
Google’s majestic Project Loon blimps. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
With the tourism minister, Sergey apparently spoke about Google’s underwater street view initiative. The firm earlier this year began documenting coral reefs around the world. Google has also created a Street View version of the buddhist Borobudur monument in Central Java.
Sources: CNN Indonesia, Viva news
Editing by Steven Millward and J.T. Quigley.
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