It's the company that has given English a new verb, and last week its senior managers announced plans to create a Pittsburgh presence. Google Inc., the California-based search engine giant, will open a research and development office here, in large part to take advantage of Carnegie Mellon University talent. Pittsburgh will join Tokyo, Zurich, New York, Phoenix and Bangalore, India, in Google's worldwide string of engineering offices.

Google, whose name has become a synonym for seeking information on the Internet, is following in the path of high-technology leaders Apple Computer and Intel Corp., both of which already have offices in Carnegie Mellon's $39 million Collaborative Innovation Center.

Google's arrival is a coup for Pittsburgh and for Carnegie Mellon. While Pittsburgh always will be a universal symbol of 19th- and 20th-century industrialization, the city and the region around it have been developing a new image as a center for higher education, finance, medical research and technology. It is fitting that Google, a 21st-century icon, should locate its newest office near the campus of a university that takes its name from three of the nation's foremost financial leaders, Andrew Carnegie and brothers Andrew W. and Richard B. Mellon.

Since Carnegie Mellon already is a center for engineering and computer science, Google's research office expects to benefit from its proximity to the university. The company already employs 50 Carnegie Mellon alumni at its offices around the world, a number that increased by one with this week's announcement. It seems appropriate that a third Andrew -- Andrew W. Moore, a Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science and robotics -- has been named to head Google's Pittsburgh office.

Many information workers, including newspaper reporters and editors, find it hard to imagine how they ever did their jobs in the days before millions of data sources were available to them with just a few keystrokes. The Post-Gazette looks forward to seeing what new life- and work-changing miracles will emerge via Google's Pittsburgh office.