Google, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is hoping to make it big in New York City.

After a year of speculation, the company on Monday officially opened a new, bigger and more Google-y office in the Big Apple in the trendy Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan.

The company, which has had an advertising sales presence in Manhattan since 2000, moved its more than 500 New York City employees into the new office at 111 Eighth Ave. and invited the press to take a sneak peek at its new digs. The office, specially designed and built for Google, houses the company's largest advertising sales team. And it's also home to the largest engineering group outside of the main office in Mountain View, Calif.

While Google is a global company with 8,000 employees throughout the world, New York City has become a key location--both in terms of generating revenue and developing new products. And the company is hoping to expand its headcount in the New York office during the next couple of years, executives said.

Google's New York-based advertising team has been instrumental in securing big partnerships, including recent deals with MySpace and AOL, said Tim Armstrong, vice president of advertising sales.

Google added an engineering staff to New York City in 2003. Since then, more than 100 engineering projects have been housed in New York, including: Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets, parts of Google Checkout, Google Blog Search and Google Mobile Search.

Craig Nevill-Manning, engineering director in New York for Google, said that New York City is ripe with software engineering talent.

Full story: CNET News.com