Will Microsoft Beat Google On The Mobile Battlefield?
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In researching how the Microsoft and Google contest might go in the months and years to come, I stumbled on a post by Nathan Weinberg. Its title was ‘What Should Google 2005 Look Like‘. It struck me that over two years later the same questions still apply. In the Desktop Web, Google has clearly established its dominance and such efforts as the MSN/Live Search function are still trailing in the dust. However future success will increasingly be determined in the Mobile Web.
In the Mobile Web, Google has as yet not managed to pull it all together. The Telcos are powerful actors in this space and no clear alliances or relationships have yet been manifest. Meanwhile in Microsoft, Ray Ozzie, the chief software architect, is intent on connecting all their considerable resources to ensure Microsoft is delivering what customers need, and that includes the Mobile Web customers. Two recent initiatives perhaps are harbingers of future success.
The first is a new mobile browser called Deepfish, which is now in beta with a limited number of testers. It promises the following:
The Deepfish Technology Preview enhances existing mobile browsing technologies by displaying content in a view that is closer to the desktop experience. Our zoom-able interface and cue map allow you to quickly access the information you care about over the web without ever losing track of where you are.
Since so few websites give a satisfactory user experience when viewed on a mobile device, this may well be part of the solution for Mobile Web clients.
Even more significant is the acquisition by Microsoft of Tellme. As GoMo News suggests, this opens up some exciting possibilities:
Tellme is a voice service platform that offers a number of voice access services from banking to package tracing. These services are the way in which Microsoft can utilize Tellme and use voice to its advantage.
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Microsoft can re-create mobile voice search and local directory search services with its acquisition on Tellme. For example, instead of offering mere click to call directory services; Microsoft will be able to serve the enterprise and offer business to business package tracing, community and local packages using voice not only to initiate but to fulfill a search query.
Increasingly a big part of the Mobile Web will be accessed by users of cell phones. Anyone who has grown up with Desktop PCs naturally thinks about using keyboards and tapping keys to input their wishes. This thinking is most inappropriate when thinking of mobile devices, and even more so for cell phones. Cell phones are designed to work with voice inputs and it would seem a no-brainer that this is the way the Mobile Web will evolve. The Microsoft/Tellme combination will be ideal in supporting these developments.
Meanwhile there is little from Google on voice and the Mobile Web. There was some talk of a Google mobile device or telephone, but the denials now seem stronger than the rumors. Today I notice they’ve launched GOOG-411 in the US for US businesses. It’s a free Telephone Directory Assistance service. At present it’s experimental, is still in the Labs and may not always be available. That’s hardly the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) that the Mobile Web will need. Unless Google does something more substantial in this area, the game may go by default to Microsoft.
Tags: Mobile, Cellphone, Microsoft, Google
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