No guarantees for Google in its mobile mission
With half the world’s population soon owning a mobile phone, the opportunity to reach more people on the web via a mobile device is huge. Research firm Gartner predicts that worldwide mobile advertising revenue will grow from less than $1bn last year to $11bn in 2011. Google has already been adapting its web search, mapping service, and advertising tools to work on mobile phones. And it’s even bidding in a US auction of wireless spectrum and developing software for mobile phones.
The company has also spearheaded the Open Handset Alliance ?which advocates open standards for mobile software ?in an effort to co-ordinate its work with that of handset makers, chip developers, application developers and mobile-phone operators.
Because Google has dominated search and advertising on the traditional internet, the expectation is that the company will also take the mobile market by storm using the same tools and the same strategies. But shoehorning its existing web tools and applications onto a tiny mobile phone isn’t going to be easy. If Google is not careful, it may find itself chasing some new, innovative start-up that figures out how to out-Google Google in mobile.
“In some ways Google is now the incumbent,” said Farhad Divecha, director of the search and mobile marketing firm AccuraCast. “Their search products and advertising tools aren’t the best right now, so there’s a good chance someone could come in and do it better.”
Back to basics with search Google first came on the scene a decade ago with a new search algorithm that could serve up better and more relevant content to users than had ever been done before. So while other companies, such as Alta Vista and Yahoo, had been in the search business for years before Google came along, it was this giant leap forward in the user experience that catapulted the company to success.
It is not surprising that search was one of the first tools Google adapted for mobile phones. And by most accounts the tool works fine. When used with the Google Maps application, mobile users can even search for local restaurants and get directions to each establishment.
But critics of Google’s mobile search tool say its results aren’t always as relevant as results from a desktop Google search. Another common complaint is that Google provides search results from regular web pages and tries to trans-code them for mobile phones. Often these sites don’t render well on certain phones.
Yahoo Go, a similar application, is considered more robust and more user-friendly than Google’s search tool.
