BANGALORE: Nelson Mattos, VP of product & engineering for Europe and emerging markets in Google, has grown the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) engineering strength300 people, when he took over in 2007, to 1,800 people today.
The team has contributed to projects including Google Chrome, Android, mobile products and Google+ Hangout. In an interview to TOI, Mattos talks about how voice-enabled interfaces in Indian languages is the next frontier of growth. Excerpts:
What is the future of mobile search given that smartphones are proliferating?
We believe the next 1 billion internet users will be differentthe first two billion and our mission is to get users online by enabling an accessible, relevant and sustainable internet ecosystem. Our strategy is focused on reducing barriers to coming online and making it relevant to local users.
The next 1 billion people who will come online may not even speak English. The best way to sell to them is to provide inputs in their local language.
We have enabled Gmail in Indian languages on feature phones. Voice-enabled interfaces in Indian languages is going to be the next big thing.
Clearly, the growth of mobile phones has surpassed desktops in emerging marketsIndia, Nigeria, Indonesia and Mexico. About 70% of the feature phones are web-enabled. Social networking sites, chat and Youtube are big drivers for people to come online.
What are the challenges in driving mobile traffic?
The challenge in emerging markets is quite differentthose in developed countries. Across emerging markets, the prices of devices and data plans are still not affordable. And the next 1 billion users will have to comethat group who cannot take advantage of the internet simply because they can't afford it.
Is Google facilitating SMBs to go online?
India Get Your Business Online is a Google-led programme to help Indian businesses go online. Almost 45% of the total exportsIndia are dependent on small businesses.
Although a majority of consumers look up online for local products and services, most small businesses neither have a website nor any online presence.
This makes them invisible to many potential customers. India has an estimated 8 million SMBs, but only about 5 lakh SMBs have a website or some sort of web presence. We plan to get at least another 5 lakh businesses online with a website in the next two years. So far, we have published websites for over 2 lakh small businessesover 8,000 cities.
What do you make of your India team's involvement in developing crowdsourcing tools?
The India centre is famous for developing crowd-sourcing tools. Googlers noticed that their local Indian maps were not very comprehensive so they created a tool called Google Map Maker, an easy-to-use tool for citizen cartographers to add more detail to maps. Today, Map Maker is available in 200 countries allowing citizen cartographers to contribute to the map, add roads, emergency services, schools, ATMs, petrol pumps to make it comprehensive.
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