'Local adaptation will be critical'

Q&A: Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

Of late, Google's been in the news for the wrong reasons "" the publishing industry alleges it is violating copyright, the Indian government asked it to remove some details from Google Earth, and now it is under fire for accepting censorship in China while claiming to defend privacy in the US. Google Inc's India-born Vice President for Asia Pacific and Latin American Operations Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, in India to launch two business offices, clears the air with Business Standard and outlines new plans to go local on various initiatives such as Earth, Video, Book Search and Jobs. And no, Google is not building its own browser, Cassidy insists. Excerpts:

You're not giving information to the Justice Department in the US on the grounds of privacy, and yet you go and accept censorship in China. What does that do to your stand on providing a free flow of information to the masses?

Our intentions are clear from our decision to decline the Justice Department's request. Maintaining privacy within the legal framework is very important for us. In the US we could say no to the Justice Department because they made a request. We feel there is a legal process to handle our concern on privacy. In China we decided not to launch Gmail that would require us to share such data. Until we are more comfortable we might not introduce certain services in countries were we think privacy may be compromised.

We had a debate for over two-and-a-half years but ultimately the decision to launch in China was based on our mission to offer the maximum amount of information to everyone and the responsibility to operate legally in every country we operate. While we knew we would be filtering information, the alternative was giving no information. We believe we should engage in this market and drive it.

It's not just China, Google's come in for a lot of flak from the publishing industry that says you're violating copyright, the Indian government wants certain details of sensitive installations to be removed...

We are not violating copyrights. What we are creating is a gigantic card calendar of books, we do not show the pages except a small snippet and if you want to read the whole book you have to go to the publisher or the web site and buy it. In case we show a page or more than a page, we take copyright permission.

In areas such as video, if there is someone who thinks his copyright has been violated he can notify Google. If we believe it is valid we take it down from the site. Google Earth is an example of the company's transition from being a great one in launching global products across the world to a company operating more locally now. As we set up country operations, we have become aware of local laws, copyrights and local sensitivities. So Google Earth is figuring out market-by-market what its strategy should be. We are thinking of launching local versions of Google Earth, Video and Book Search.

There has been speculation that you might take on Microsoft and create your own browser.

We are not building any browser; our focus is on search and we want to be a super search engine that offers all services, which is what consumers want.

Services such as?

One is to get information that is currently not available online "" books, libraries and multimedia. Second, we are investing in open platforms. So, for instance, for our map service, we are encouraging third-party developers to come in to develop services. We are also investing in local search and making it a global phenomenon so that you can search for a baby sitter in your locality, for instance. We have already launched such local services in markets such as the UK. We are also investing in the convergence arena, integrating voice, instant messaging and so on. The other area that is extremely relevant in the Asia Pacific region is how to reach the mobile users.

Do you have any search products on the mobile?

In the US we do "" we have web search through wap portal, local search and driving directions through SMS. We have tied up with Motorola and you have single buttons in the phones to get you to Google search. T-mobile offers a Google portal on the phone.

What kind of innovation are search engines like yours getting into to drive advertising revenue to you?

Search engines are still to take a significant share of the online ad market "" it is less than 5 per cent at present, so even if we have three to five players it is OK. Rather than a shift of online revenues, we need to grow the overall pie. Search advertising cuts across all spectrums "" it is meant for everyone including the sole proprietor to the business in your garage.

We recently took over a company that will help small and medium enterprises to advertise on radio using an online platform. We are using the strength of Adworld (Google's global advertising programme that enables advertisers to target customers who are interested in their products or services) to other mediums, including offline. So you will find in some US magazines, Adworld advertising where advertisers place the ad with us and we put it in a print form. We will extend Adworld to the mobile space too. Then there is target advertising which allows you to target your ad within ten miles of where your business operates.

Will advertising remain your only model for revenue generation?

In the foreseeable future, yes. But we are experimenting with video, which is a pay-per-view model.

How will you address the fact that India has many languages?

So far, most of the Indian Internet population uses English even though we have Google search in various regional languages. To be able to cater to all the dialects in India, machine translation has to get better. In India we need to have more content generation in the local languages but there are not too many pages available. It's a chicken-and-egg situation: we need to do a better job but more content has to also be generated.