Walter Doyle, chief executive of Where Inc., which was acquired by PayPal last year, said the company’s local office has become “a center of excellence for mobile development,’’ and could add “several hundred people’’ in Boston over the coming years.
Doyle said he is in the market for expanded office space, and the group will most likely stay in Boston, as opposed to moving to Cambridge or the suburbs. Several commercial real estate brokers told the Globe that parent company eBay has been looking at sites around the city, including in the designated Innovation District in Boston’s Seaport area.
In the November meeting, state officials “made the case for Massachusetts: the strong and growing industry cluster, the talent pool,’’ said Gregory Bialecki, the state’s secretary for Housing and Economic Development, via e-mail. State officials also invited PayPal to talk to other well-known technology companies that have boosted their local operations.
Software maker Microsoft Corp., Internet search service Google Inc., and network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. are among the large companies headquartered on the West Coast that have increased their presence in Massachusetts, where they can tap into the state’s technology workforce.
Last week, Thompson, a Raynham native and Stonehill College alumnus, was hired away from PayPal to become Yahoo Inc.’s new chief executive. But according to Doyle, eBay’s government relations staff plans to pay another visit to Beacon Hill next week to continue the discussions.
One possible topic of conversation will be whether the state will offer PayPal a tax break in return for adding jobs here, a subject that Bialecki said was not broached at the November meeting. Tax “incentives often aren’t the primary issue for companies like this,’’ he said.
