| Google is often spoken of in divine terms (haven't you heard, "Google is God"?). |
| It is also spoken of in magical terms. Harvard Business Review recently said the company appears to have an infinite number of doves, rabbits, and other creatures in its hat: maps, mail, news, spreadsheets, video, alternative-energy invest-ments, and cash. |
| It thus seemed fitting when Google India put a magician, a young girl called Suhani Shah, on stage at the launch of the |
| Indian site of YouTube, which enables people to watch and share videos online and which Google acquired in October 2006. Shah wasn't there to do a show, but to talk of how YouTube has given people across the world a glimpse of what she does and many of those people have bought her shows. |
| She was one of five business partners on display. NDTV was another; it is using YouTube videos extensively in a new show. Vikram Chandra, the chief executive officer of NDTV Networks, is also using YouTube for personal benefit. He has found tutorials on the site that "" he hopes "" will teach him to play the guitar. |
| The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has put 1,600 lectures on the site, which will rise to 6,000 by the end of the year. Rajshri Media, the new economy arm of the film production company that made Maine Pyar Kiya and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, has made a 90-episode remixed version of Akbar-Birbal tales, which it will put on YouTube. |
| Leena Nandan, joint secretary in the Union tourism ministry, says the ministry was the first government agency in the world to use YouTube for its Incredible India campaign. |
| At present, YouTube is in talks with a non-government organisation that is making videos of school teachers teaching in the schools of Uttar Pradesh's villages, which will be shown in villages that do not have schools. |
Discovery of India In the last two years, Google India has done just that: built communities. It has done that by actually embracing India "" rather than just paying lip service to the idea. Google.co.in offers search functions in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. Realising that only about 13 per cent of India's 2.2 billion population is English-literate, it launched on May 5 this year Google Translate translation service for Hindi. |
| This enables automated translation between Hindi and English. If you want to translate some text or a web page, or issue a query in Hindi and want results translated from English, you can do it. If you would like to express your views on a subject you're very passionate or knowledgeable about, you can create your own blog and write posts in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam. There are also Google local search, local business centre and SMS search. |
| Google Bangalore is its first research and development centre outside the US. It was set up with a charter to innovate, implement and launch new technologies and products to a global audience. Google India Labs, announced in August last year, is a "technology playground" for products that are in the process of development and require market feedback to improve. I |
| ndia was the eighth country "" after the US, China, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain "" to have a country-focused labs programme. India labs serves as a platform to showcase innovations that are particularly relevant to the Indian market and also allows users to take a peek into Google's future offerings. |
| "Google has recognised that it has to build communities. It is the first obvious search engine of choice for anybody and has used that position well to build Internet affiliations," says Rajesh Jain, head of the IT practice at management consultancy firm KPMG. |
| Some localisation is imperative in most countries. India demands more of it because of its diversity of languages and culture and its unique Internet access profile. Of all the important markets, India is the only one where most of the Internet usage takes place in offices, schools and cyber cafes and only a little at home. In the developed markets, there are dedicated machines at home for using the Internet. |
| "Every country has particular circumstances. So, it is also important to organise the information in a way that it is relevant, useful and interesting to the user base," says Rao. |
| Strategic patience India's "particular circumstances" may have poured cold water on the plans of many companies. Internet penetration in the country is only about 5.3 per cent, compared with 71 per cent in the US. Even comparable markets like Brazil and China are far ahead with 22.4 per cent and 15.9 per cent, respectively. |
| The figure for broadband penetration in India is still more abysmal at 2-3 per cent. It's 90 per cent in South Korea, where gaming, which needs broadband, is all the rage. Expectedly, Internet advertising in India was estimated at less than Rs 225 crore in 2007-08 compared with Rs 60,000 crore in the US. |
| However, Google thinks longer than long term. Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of its global operations, has said that it will take about 300 years to achieve the company's mission to "organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". He has given a 1,200-quarter forecast, underlining the company's approach to building value and capability. |
| This is evident in the way the company talks about YouTube's India chapter. Both Rao and Arsiwala emphasise that the focus is not on revenues but building a community. "Passion for video is deep-rooted in India. Everyone loves story telling. Everyone uses video cameras. The home video phenomenon is just taking off in India. We want to be there when it takes off," says Arsiwala. |
| Adds Rao: "You have to keep building the community until you reach a point where you feel that the community is vibrant and diverse. When you are giving value to the average user on a daily basis, you can think of monetising it." |
| Milking community That point has already come elsewhere in Google India. To cash in, it has adopted a verticalisation strategy that will educate, train and guide businesses to leverage the most out of online advertising. "In advertising we go for depth more than breadth. Advertising is not like selling FMCG. You have to put advertising in the context of the customer's business objectives," says Rao. |
| The company has set up five verticals: financial services, local & classifieds, travel, media & entertainment, and technology & health communication. These are managed by experts, often taken from specific sectors. There is also a team to advise advertising and media buying agencies on how online advertising can become a component of their media planning. |
| Then there are AdWords and AdSense. The first is a way to purchase cost-per-click or cost-per-impression advertising, with the flexibility to set and modify the budget level. AdWords ads are displayed along with search results on Google, as well as on search and content sites. |
| AdSense is an ad-serving programme in which website owners can enroll to enable text, image and "" more recently "" video advertisements on their sites. Google's technology matches the most relevant and highest performing AdWords ads to the publisher's website. Google provides the ads; the publisher doesn't have to worry about advertiser relationships. |
| Some day, YouTube, which already has a revenue stream in InVideo, will also be monetised. Arsiwala is quick to count her blessings: YouTube already has 5 million unique users in India, it added 200,000 new users every month from India last year and that made the country jump from the top 30 to top 15 among the company's markets. |
| So how does the future look? Not too bad, by most accounts. "Tomorrow's kids will spend a lot more time on the Internet than on TV," says Rajjat Barjatya, the managing director of Rajshri Media. According to KPMG's Jain, Internet advertising, though small, will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 50 per cent in the next five years. |
| "The one thing I have learnt with YouTube is never to forecast. You must always buy 10 times the data centre and bandwidth that you think you need," says Arsiwala. Having joined Google in 2005, she moved to YouTube in January last year. She started by setting a target for December, which was blown by the middle of February. |
| Monetisation |
| The Google ad network is the largest organised ecosystem to globally target and distribute online ads It is being extended to offline advertising Specialised account managers, experts in their field, work closely with advertisers to build and evolve search and creative campaigns |
| AdWords and AdSense: |
| AdWords is a way to purchase cost-per-click or cost-per-impression advertising, with the flexibility to set and modify the budget level |
| AdWords ads are displayed along with search results on Google, as well as on search and content sites |
| AdSense is an ad-serving programme wherein website owners can enroll to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites |
| Google technology matches the most relevant and highest performing AdWords ads to the publisher's website |
| Google provides the ads; the publisher doesn't have to worry about advertiser relationships. |
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