Google Raises The Game for Mobile Internet
Yet more announcements this week highlight how serious Google is taking the mobile markets.
In a statement this week DoCoMo, the Japanese mobile provider, and Google announced that Google would be the default search results provider. This would open up more than 50% of the Japanese mobile market. The Tokyo based company claims over 48 million of their users access the internet via their mobile phones.
DoCoMo has been embracing Google’s vision of the mobile web and is even rumoured to be talks with the search giant to pre-install Android on hand sets by mid-2008.
In the second mobile announcement this YouTube has finalised their mobile interface allowing viewing and uploading of videos. The mobile site has previously been reworked specifically for Vodafone subscribers but the new mobile site is in the stages of being opened up across networks.
The YouTube site has been a source of confusion for Google. The video site has been difficult to develop as a business model and has continually been a source of legal issues. Now Google has to come up with a way of monetizing the YouTube mobile site as well.
This is another big bite into the mobile web traffic share. At this rate MSN and yahoo will have a long way to catch up.
