The headhunting drive comes after the company revealed this week that sales in Britain had failed to hit targets, sending its shares on a record nosedive.

The shares were down more than 8.5 per cent to $396.31 in midday trading on Wall Street yesterday, despite the company reporting an 82 per cent rise in fourth-quarter profits against the same period in 2004.

Google singled out its British operations as particularly bad, blaming slow internet traffic during Christmas for a drop in sales. In the three months to last September, Britain accounted for 15 per cent of Google’s sales. In the next three months, the proportion dropped to 14 per cent.

Google said late last year that it was to boost its marketing and sales department in Dublin by as many as 600 people, to be the driving force behind its European expansion plans. The company also intended to hire as many as 100 workers for its research and development centre in Zurich.

However, it is in London that Google hoped to build its second-biggest management centre outside the United States. The company’s fledgeling wireless division was seeking the lion’s share of senior recruits, sources said.

Britain is of particular interest to the company because about 47 per cent of its internet users use a dial-up connection. Google sees those users as potential providers of future revenue as they switch to broadband connections.

The company must also grapple with a softening advertising market in Europe. Retail advertising in Britain was slow over Christmas, a Google insider said, compounding the poor performance in the UK.

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