Google targets mobile future

Great BBC article here about how Google understands the specific user context of mobile search...

Highlights for me are the following quotes by Dipchand "Deep" Nishar, the man in charge of Google Mobile.

"The same search query, because of the context, means very different search results," said Mr Nishar. "Search on mobiles is about finding not browsing.

"It's a smaller form factor and you are not going to sit at it for three hours. Most people in the developed world are within 20 or 30 minutes of broadband and a screen, and that's when they will browse.

"On a mobile it's important that you find it right away."

This means that Google has to slice its huge corpus of data differently for mobile users and tailor results to where people are sitting or standing when they make the query.

For instance, he said, the first result that comes up after typing "film" into a PC browser is the Internet Movie Database.

"But type 'films' into a mobile browser and you are most likely going to see a movie," he told the BBC News website.

In outcome-driven innovation parlance, the article illustrates the importance of understanding the "Jobs" that different customers (from different cultures) are trying to get done when using their mobiles for search. Jobs can be both functional or emotional (social / personal) in nature.

Once these different Jobs are known, then it is possible to identify the different desired outcomes that people are seeking to achieve when using their mobile for search. By identifying important yet unsatisfied outcomes,  companies can spot more precise opportunities for creating breakthrough product and service innovation.

I am running a pre-conference workshop on Outcome Driven Innovation in Telecoms at the IIR Telecoms conference on Churn and Loyalty in Amsterdam on July 10th. More details can be found here.