Google Inc. yesterday announced plans to double its Pittsburgh footprint by leasing a 40,000-square-foot office at the one-time Nabisco bakery plant site in Larimer, and officials said they are "aggressively hiring" to fill up the extra space.

The search engine company that has become so much more, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., now employs a little more than 100 workers at the Collaborative Innovation Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Oakland.

The existing CMU location is approximately 20,000 square feet. Employees who work there will be moving to the new space in the Bakery Square development.

About one-half of the office's current employees were educated at schools in the region -- places like CMU, the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State University and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland -- and Google plans to maintain a similar ratio as it expands, said site director Andrew Moore. Most of the jobs made available by the move are positions in software engineering and engineering operations.

For a company that seems to know everything, Google doesn't willingly divulge much. There's no word on just how many new employees will be brought in, but Dr. Moore said a good comparison was the company's Cambridge, Mass., site, which has more than 200 sales and engineering employees and continues to hire.

Google was founded 11 years ago by two graduate students in a Stanford University lab, but has since become what is known as a "disruptor," shaking things up for countless industries as it expands products and technology. According to the Nielsen Co., Google's market share for online search providers in July 2009 was almost 65 percent.

Dr. Moore, a CMU professor hired by Google in 2005 to head the Pittsburgh office, will continue to work as site director. When it opened four years ago, the site employed two engineers. As it expands, the company shuns workforce quotas.

"The only limiting factor is finding the best people," he said.

Dr. Moore expects the new office to open in the second half of 2010, and applications are already being accepted.

For more information on open positions at Google Pittsburgh, visit www.google.com/jobs. Applicants can apply specifically for openings at the Pittsburgh site.

Many of Google's larger satellite offices incorporate a sales team, but plans for now are to keep the Pittsburgh office dedicated to engineering and computer science work. The work at the new site will not change, with a focus on "developing the next set of Google products," Mr. Moore said.

Bakery Square, a $130 million project working to transform the old Nabisco plant along Penn Avenue, began talks with Google about six months ago and signed a lease "a few days ago," said developer Todd Reidbord, of Walnut Capital.

"They've got the best space in the building," said Mr. Reidbord.

Google is basically leasing the penthouse. The company will occupy the sixth and seventh floors, Mr. Reidbord said. A portion of the seventh floor is empty space, allowing for a part of the sixth-floor space to be two stories high with lots of windows.

"It looks as big as a gym, that's how high it is," Mr. Reidbord said.

The first floor of the building is designated for retail and restaurant space, while floors two through seven are office space. The only in-house tenant at the moment is a Pitt lab on the fourth floor.

The move continues Google's partnership with Pittsburgh, and especially Carnegie Mellon, where chief executive Eric Schmidt served on the board of trustees and delivered the 2009 commencement address.

In an interview yesterday with the Post-Gazette, Carnegie Mellon President Jared Cohon said no new tenant for Google's space in the Collaborative Innovation Center has been chosen.

One prime candidate, he said, is the Disney Research Lab, located across the street, but current occupants also expressed a desire for more space. Among others, the center now houses an Intel Research Center and Apple's Pittsburgh office.

The mission of the CIC, Dr. Cohon said, is to serve as a landing site for out-of-town companies that will eventually outgrow the space. "Google's decision is driven by the need for more space, and that's fine," he said.

The move speaks well of Carnegie Mellon, Google and Pittsburgh at large, he said.

"The big payoff here is more jobs and very high-quality jobs," he said. "They're high-paying, stable and ones that generate more jobs."

Google's growth in the university's Collaborative Innovation Center presents a "new model for corporate-university collaboration," Dr. Cohon said.

Google announced in September that it had purchased a CMU spin-off company, ReCAPTCHA, that digitizes online text. ReCAPTCHA will move to the Bakery Square location.

Meanwhile, retailer Pottery Barn had been in talks with Bakery Square developers about opening a store at the new site but has since decided to stay on Walnut Street in Shadyside.

Anthropologie, a retail chain that sells women's apparel, still plans to open a store at Bakery Square in May, said Ed Kunzman, who manages the retailer's lone Pittsburgh store at the Galleria in Mt. Lebanon. "Everything on our end is still a go," he said.

Local tech leaders were thrilled at the news of Google's planned move.

"I'm so happy!" said Audrey Russo, president and chief executive of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. "Our self-esteem should start to go up now, don't you think?"

Some elements of Bakery Square may feel familiar to Google. One of the company's New York sites, in Chelsea Market, also is a former Nabisco plant.

Google plans an open house for the new site sometime in the summer. Asked about a housewarming party, Dr. Cohon acknowledged his lost landlord status.

"It's now not our space, but if they invite me I'll certainly go," he said.

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