Research will focus on how to deal with huge amounts of data, rapidly increasing user base Google Inc. is opening a research and development (R&D) center in Zurich and is looking to recruit European engineers and computer scientists, the company announced on its Web site Tuesday.The Mountain View, California, company is seeking engineers to help solve problems in the areas of “distributed systems, information retrieval, algorithms, a variety of novel search features and scalability issues related to dealing with huge amounts of data and a rapidly increasing user base.” The European R&D center will also focus on improving the its “language-specific offerings in ways that will benefit all of our global services,” Google’s Web site said.The company has sales offices in Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada and in December announced that it had opened an engineering center in Bangalore, India, its first full engineering facility outside the U.S. The company also employs engineers in Mountain View; Santa Monica, California; and New York, according to its Web site. Representatives from Google could not immediately be reached for comment.It is believed within the industry that Google, the world’s most popular search engine, is in the final stages of preparing itself for a long awaited initial public offering, though the company has repeatedly declined to comment on its plans. Software Development