Japan presents mobile search companies with a cutting-edge test market
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Whenever Google comes out with a new product or service, U.S. industry watchers seem to shower praise on the search giant. They have become the advertising and web technology version of Apple, and consumers eagerly speculate about their latest moves and await their product releases. Not so in the tech-savvy nation of Japan, where users were quick to pan a mobile version of Google Maps which was well-received by U.S. consumers. As Businessweek reports, “Says [Google] software engineer Ken Wakasa: “People’s expectations are very high here compared to other regions.” As Google prepares to expand their mobile search division, they are using picky Japanese consumers as a test market for products and services designed for web-enabled cell phones.
In the summer of 2006, Google famously teamed up with Japanese mobile carrier KDDI, the second largest in the Asian nation. Last month, Google also struck a deal with the largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo. The two companies provide cell service to nearly 100 million users, and a much larger percentage of them (compared with U.S. consumers) use their cell phones for web access. The partnership aims to improve search engine technology, email access, ads, and website performance for mobile phones. Japan is the location of choice for Google not only because of the discerning population of cell phone users, but also because plenty of popular Japanese websites are specifically formatted for mobile access.
Google employs an observation method for testing, as a representative told Businessweek. “We just tell them: ‘Find me a restaurant for tonight in Shibuya,’ and we just watch.” Testing is sometimes done in-house, but participants are encouraged to use their mobile devices as they normally would. This gives Google a more realistic picture of how to improve their search technology. The ultimate goal of testing is to allow mobile users to find what they need using the smallest number of clicks.
The search engine’s testing efforts in Japan have revealed some surprising results. For example, while many computer users access Google to search for news stories and articles, data from testing in Japan suggested that mobile searchers are looking for images or videos rather than sites with lengthy (and necessarily tiny) text. This focus on image results has helped Google tweak their mobile search service. Rather than having the options to search for a number of different media (like on the regular Google home page), mobile users will have these options automatically integrated into their results. This move is a step forward for universal search, an initiative to automatically provide search results in many formats to users.
Another surprise for Google came during an unusual spike in searches late one night. As Google’s chief in the Japanese lab Ken Tokusei told Businessweek, “We were wondering: Was it spam? Was it a system error?” The late-night surge came from a popular television show which promoted a freeringtone download but did not show the web address long enough for viewers to log on. This surge is remarkable because it shows that Japanese cell phone users, who are a few years ahead of their American counterparts, are using phones for web searches even when their at home, and presumably, have access to a PC.
Perhaps the biggest barrier to making Google searches as easy from a phone as they are from a computer is the compatibility issue. Unlike computer software, where users really have very little choice of operating system, cell phones come with a myriad of different software packages depending on the manufacturer and service provider. The variety of software makes it hard for Google to optimize their offerings for every user, though their mobile platform Android aims to unite developers. With Japanese consumers as their guide, Google will hopefully bring a new uniformity to web-enabled phone software, allowing more users to experience their useful apps anytime, anywhere.
By Haley January Eckels
