Google to Japan: We are Here to Learn
Interesting BusinessWeek article about how Google is racing to catch up to the mobile phone market in Japan.
Japan: Google’s Real-Life Lab:
Japan’s handset-toting masses, it seems, have a lot to teach the Net giant. The country has become a vast lab for Google as it tries to refine mobile search technology. That’s because Japan’s 100 million cell-phone users represent the most diverse—and discriminating—pool of mobile subscribers on the planet. While Google also does plenty of testing elsewhere, the Japanese are often more critical because they are as likely to tap into the Net with a high-tech phone as a PC and can do so at speeds rivaling fixed-line broadband. And because Japanese carriers have offered such services for years, plenty of Web sites are formatted for cell phones.
Cell phones in the US are getting better all the time, but Japan is still years ahead. Fingerprint and face recognition systems, video talk, and the ubiquitous barcodes that you can scan on advertisements and posters to go directly to the appropriate website…Japanese cell phones are pretty amazing. Then again, most people don’t seem to really use all those advanced features. In fact, cell phones here seem less like phones, and more like mobile email tools. On trains, it is considered rude to talk on the phone, so very few people do. Most people just use their phones to mail each other, while they swim through the throngs of people at the station, trying to locate each other.
Or just to pass the time on the train.
