The Hindu Business Line : Google innovators strive to make a difference

Global R&D
Google News emerged when an employee of Google wanted all the information available on cricket on the Web from publications all over the world.
The Japanese, with their experience in precision planning, came out with Google Transit, a facilitator of logistics.

V.Rishi Kumar

Hyderabad, Feb. 3 For Internet search provider Google innovations in non-US markets such as India, Thailand, Japan, Poland, and Brazil are making a difference with its much distributed research-driven workforce.

Unlike the US, which has a largely PC-centric Internet interface and about 20 per cent accessing information on mobile phones, a big chunk of Internet users in the Asia Pacific region are mobile devices-driven.

Speaking to Business Line, the Director of Product Management, Mr Dipchand V. Nishar, based at Mountain View (California), explained how Google foresees the Web-driven services space and how innovators handle this challenging task.

Making access easy

He explained there is a fundamental shift in the way people access information. As opposed to a device-centric nature, be it computers or mobile phones, the accent is on cross platform integration, making access to information seamless and device agnostic, he explained.

Researchers in Taipei, Poland, Brazil, Thailand, India (Bangalore) and Japan are in the thick of development work, making it easy for a user to access information from anywhere, anytime.

Local objectives, global offerings

During a visit to Hyderabad, a day after the announcement of Microsoft’s $44.5-billion bid for Yahoo, Mr Nishar, now touring regional research facilities, said innovations that start with local objectives could become global offerings.

Citing the case of how Google News or Google Finance emerged out of India, and how Google Transit, a facilitator of logistics, came out of Japan, Mr Nishar said it is just that the latter could have been possible only in Japan. No one else could have thought of Google Transit but the Japanese with their precision planning, execution and with an eye on punctuality, he said.

What starts as a local innovation, gets validated for global usage. Google News emerged when an employee of Google wanted all the information available on cricket on the Web from publications all over the world.

When asked what set them apart, Mr Nishar said that employees were encouraged to come up with ideas. Several of the innovations which ended up as products, such as Android for mobile phones, Google News and Google Finance, had come through this way. In the 20 per cent “free time” where they are allowed to do what they want, they get innovative. It is this type of flexi-work environment that helps churn out new products.

Digital convergence

Over 40 per cent of world’s population live in this part of the world. Internet penetration is low and the consumption of the digital media is poised for rapid growth. In fact, patterns in some of the social networking sites such as Orkut showed that social network graphs were emerging. Contrary to general perception that only the youth use it, a good number of users were older, he explained.