In recent months, Google has seen an acceleration of activity among mobile phone users. The company said this is evidence that the era of mobile Internet is at hand. Google has seen sharp increases in mobile Internet usage spurred by services Google has
offered on BlackBerry, Nokia and iPhone devices.
“We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage,” Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, said in an interview. “We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating.
Waddell believes the availability of flat-rate data plans from carriers encourages consumers to connect with the Internet over their phones. The per-minute charges of the past discouraged mobile Web browsing. Waddell also remarked that improved Web browsers and better designed services from companies like Google are fueling growth.
Recent Google software has allowed mobile users to increase Web search speeds by up to 40%. The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform Web searches of Google by eliminating initial search steps of finding a Web browser on the phone, opening the browser, waiting for network access and getting to Google.com. The company said the increased convenience has increased the number of searches.
“We are actually seeing a 20 percent increase in the number of searches by people,” Waddell said.
“Faster is better than slow, especially on a mobile device, where fast is much better than slow,” Waddell said. “Not only are we are seeing increased user satisfaction but also greater usage.”
Users of phones based on software from Research in Motion, Nokia’s Symbian-based phones and now Microsoft Windows Mobile can download the software at http://mobile.google.com/.
Wow, great quote: “Faster is better than slow, especially on a mobile device, where fast is much better than slow,”
HAHAHA!
Comment by Alex — March 20, 2008 @ 5:37 am
This article has little value and insight. And of course, more searches=more $$ for google and their ad network.
Comment by Bailey Cross — March 20, 2008 @ 7:43 am
Google, thanks for noticing us mobile users. So, now that you’re paying attention to us:
* When will gmail mobile be compatible with a Treo? We’ve been waiting like 2 years for this.
* If you’re not going to help us there, might you at least make it possible to access gmail reliably (if clumsily) from our mobile browsers, via POP? It would help a lot if you’d provide a link from the mobile-browser version of gmail to the gmail settings/forwarding-and-POP page, so we can re-select “enable POP from now on” whenever your servers arbitrarily stop POP except for old mail.
Currently, with the settings pages completely absent from the mobile version of gmail, we’re hosed both ways, no matter how hard we try to use gmail on the road.
I know, we Treo users are a dying breed, but c’mon, we’re geeks, and there are still a lot of us here in SF. Show us some love, won’t you?
Comment by Treo User — March 20, 2008 @ 9:40 pm