Google: Britain must embrace the web's innovators Although we are steadily building a team of talented software engineers in London, the leadership and centre of gravity of product development is still in the US. It's why Google, which was developed in America, pays the majority of its taxes there. But we're keen to encourage the next generation of startups and computer scientists - one of the reasons we have invested in a base for start ups in East London so the next Google might come from these shores. New technologies do bring profits to innovators like Google, but they offer so much more value to consumers, to businesses and to the public sector. Britain is well-placed to lead the world on technology and innovation. We have the most developed Internet economy in the world - and it's growing. Already a projected 10 per cent of UK GDP- the highest proportion of any country - comes from British online business. But our competitors are catching up - by 2016, nearly 70 per cent of the Internet users in the G-20 will be from emerging markets. China will have nearly 800 million Internet users - about the same number as France, Germany, India, Japan, the UK and the US combined. While we may lead the world on e-commerce we are still well below our potential: only one third of small and medium-sized companies have a web presence and only one in seven sell their products and services online, missing out on the potential for billions of pounds more revenue. The Internet can provide a low-cost global shopfront and worldwide audience, but that is only the start. Last year, the CEO of IBM UK revealed that they could not fill one in five of the technology jobs they created: computing represents only half of one percent of all A-Levels in the UK last year. That is a serious gap between supply and demand: solving it will mean more people in jobs and British businesses doing better. This isn't just about the geeks. The Internet is already changing the lives of the millions of us for whom computer programmes are a foreign language. But the fact that 16 million British adults lack the ability to send or receive an email, and 8 million claim to have never used the Web, makes the skills gap more alarming. Despite being the most likely people to buy online, we are also among the least likely to learn online. That's something we need to change. Not just because of the opportunity for people to learn online - but additionally because of the potential for education to become a great British export. We need to place the Internet at the core of our industrial, educational and economic plans. At the opening of the Olympics, we celebrated Britain's role in driving the industrial revolution. The furnaces and railway lines have given way to smartphones and fibre optics. We are just at the start of the second great industrial revolution. It is time to be bold, to embrace the disruption and put innovation and technology at the heart of everything we do - from our classrooms to our boardrooms to the Cabinet table. We must build on our innovation history, or become innovation history. Matt Brittin is Google's Vice President for Northern and Central Europe and is speaking at today's Innovate to Survive conference in London.