Google caters to net users in emerging markets

The company expects another 1 billion people around the globe will have gone online between 2010 and 2015, the majority of them in emerging countries.
Most of the roughly 500 million who have already done so during the period are now online via mobile phones, a trend that is expected to continue through to 2015, said Julian Persaud, managing director of Google Southeast Asia.
Accessing the Web used to be about desktops, but from now it is all about mobile devices, he said.
To prepare these people to go online, Google is investing in the establishment of data centres across the region to allow its products and services to work better throughout Asia. It is spending US$700 million (Bt21.4 billion) to set up centres in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, he said.
With the future being one in which people have multi-devices, Google’s Voice Search service is designed to facilitate users to search the Internet by voice on their phones.
The new population for a new Internet is coming from emerging markets, Persaud said, adding that a large number of new users would be from countries such as India with big populations but as yet relatively few online users.
Emerging markets for Google in this context do not include China and Russia.
Moreover, some 73 per cent of the next 500 million coming online are not English speakers.
With Thailand being an important market for Google, the company plans to launch the Voice Search service in the Thai language. About 100,000 Thai speakers will serve as a sample for the service in the Kingdom.
Next year, Google plans to introduce products for business customers and other users in the Thai market. These include Google Voice Search, Google Maps with local information and an in-search service.
“In Thailand, Google has the Go Online scheme to encourage Thai people to get online. The Web economy is growing faster than other parts of the economy, so businesses should be aware of this and prepare for it,” said Persaud.
In developed countries, the Web economy contributes around 3.4 per cent to gross domestic product, while the figure in emerging markets is about 1.9 per cent of GDP.
Nelson Mattos, Google’s vice president of product and engineering for Europe and emerging markets, said that only 14 per cent of the population in emerging marketing currently benefited from the Internet.
“Poverty is an information obstacle that blocks people from education,” he said. “In emerging countries, such as in Africa, incomes have increased by 30 per cent just by using Google search facilities.”
There are three challenges in getting people in emerging countries to go online, he said. First, the Internet in such markets is very expensive.
“Free Zone” is a cooperative venture between Google and Internet service providers and telecom operators in the Philippines and South Africa aimed at overcoming this problem. Free Internet access is provided for local users for six months or a year, sometimes longer, depending on the local partner.
“We are open to discuss the concept with mobile operators in Thailand, where we have already conducted a similar pilot with some operators,” said Mattos.
The second problem is that the Internet is often not relevant to people in a particular market, as products and services have been developed for devices that most people in those countries do not have.
Third, the markets have little stability in terms of the “ecosystem”, which includes developers and start-ups.
About 70 per cent of mobile phones in emerging countries are Internet-enabled, but most of the users have no data plan, which is why only 14 per cent of the population in such markets is online, he said.
Google therefore offers Free Zone, so that people with no data plan can experience the benefits of using the Internet.
They can browse the Web and get into Gmail without having to pay for an Internet connection.
The zone provides Gmail and Google Plus and access to any websites reachable from the Google search engine.
“There is too little local content |in Thailand, but people come online looking for such content,” Mattos pointed out.
He added that as Internet firms focused more on emerging markets, mobile operators had to create data plans that are suitable and affordable for people in these countries.