Google Ventures will scout for entrepreneurial opportunities in a broad range of fields, from search and advertising to mobile computing to medical records and personal genomics. Its target is to invest $100 million in the coming year, with the boston area being one of its geographic areas of interest.

Miner, a Boston-area serial entrepreneur who played a key role in persuading Google to open a research center in Cambridge, will be stepping away from his role with Google's mobile platform Android, which he helped develop, to comanage Google Ventures. The other managing partner, Bill Maris, who has a background in biotechnology and healthcare, will be based at Google's corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Google is open to funding biotechnology start-ups. "If we find an interesting therapeutics company, we'd be happy to put down a term sheet," Maris said.