The worst of the crisis has passed and the US recovery is likely to begin this autumn, Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt said.

Schmidt said the rate of jobless claims is decreasing although the absolute number is increasing, it is reasonable to be optimistic for 2010.

He didn’t want to comment on Google’s team of engineers which will have to study the technical specifications of Microsoft search engine Bing.

But he added: “Bing is a competitor. We have absolutely looked at Bing; we have actually studied what they do as Microsoft studied what Google does.”