Published by Ewan Spence at 20:54 UTC, March 19th 2008
Google is seeing a massive increase in mobile internet devices using their services (reports Reuters). And while the obvious answer is 'people are using the web on their phones!' I don't think that's the case. More like Google has signed enough deals for search plug-ins and 'go on, set Google as the browsers default homepage' that they are grabbing a bigger share of existing traffic.
Now whether that's good for the industry as a whole, or just for Google's traffic is a debatable point - do we really want the replication of Google on the 'big' internet to be the same on the mobile net? What is clear is that Google, as a public company, is going to need to grow revenue - and at some point that means opening up advertising on the mobile screen. Making sure they have the views is critical, so this diverting of the attention stream to the Mountain View based company is part of their business strategy:
Google made the pronouncement as it introduced a new software download for mobile phones running Microsoft Corp's Windows Mobile software that conveniently positions a Google Web search window on the home screen of such phones. Similar versions of the search software which Google introduced for Blackberry users in December and certain Nokia phones in February have sped up the time users take to perform Web searches by 40 percent and, in turn, driven usage. The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform Web searches on Google by eliminating initial search steps of finding a Web browser on the phone, opening the browser, waiting for network access, and getting to Google.com. By making a Google search box more convenient, mobile phone users have begun using the Internet more, the company said.
Read more over at Reuters, and then ponder if this is a chicken first or egg first situation on what's driving the increased traffic.
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