Google Connecting NYC Businesses to the Web

* Making New York City a high-tech center isn’t only about developing Internet and media startups in Manhattan’s so-called Silicon Alley – it’s also about connecting less technologically savvy businesses to the Internet. Google is taking up that effort across the city all next week as part of the company’s America Get Your Business Online initiative, which helps mostly small businesses launch and maintain a web site. Susan Molinari, the former Staten Island congresswoman who took a job as the head of Google’s Washington, D.C., office earlier this year, said that while 97 percent of Americans shop or browse online, 58 percent of businesses do not have a web presence – and 53 percent do not in New York. Some 500 businesses in Brooklyn, Staten Island, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx have already signed up to meet with Google, and lawmakers including Reps. Yvette Clarke and Jerry Nadler are planning to show up too. “We talk them through becoming more technical in their sales so that their business and their product and their presence can reach a wider, if not international, audience so they can continue to grow,” Molinari said. “It’s what we’re doing throughout the nation – but New York has a sweet spot for the tech industry and Google.”