During Google’s Q4 earnings call, a lot of the discussion focused on the mobile web. Google clearly thinks that the mobile web is poised for massive growth over the next few years and projects like Android show that Google wants to control as much of this market as possible. One of the most interesting comments during yesterday’s call came from Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s vice president for product development, who said that “with all the capabilities these phones that are coming out have like GPS, cameras, we think there is the potential to actually make this mobile web better than the PC web.”
For Google, It’s All About Ads
Google, of course, is mostly interested into turning the mobile web into a lucrative market for its advertising products. For Google, making the mobile web better than the PC web means that you can call advertisers directly from a mobile ad and increase conversion rates.
For most users, however, the ability for ads to let them make calls on their mobile phones is probably not very high up on their wish lists. In the broader context of recent trends on the mobile web, however, Rosenberg’s comment does ring true.
Using Sensors to Personalize the Mobile Web
Just a week, ago, for example, Google introduced location aware searches for mobile phones. If you go to google.com on your phone today, Google tweaks its search results based on your current location. Google’s regular browser-based search can’t do this.
Thanks to the sensors in today’s mobile phones and the potential for adding more complex sensors in the near future, the mobile web has the potential to give us a more personalized user experience than our current laptops and desktops are able to.
What do You Think?
Does the mobile web have the potential to be better than the PC web on your desktop? Isn’t the small screen a serious impediment for making this experience better than the desktop experience? Or will Apple’s mythical tablet solve all these problems and give us a mobile web experience that’s somewhere in between the user experience a phone and on the desktop?
