As there has been a lot of debate about the future of search, I have found Twitter-Search to be so useful. It is clearly an enabler to find people of a certain interest group as a way to get good content and direct answers to your questions.  A lot of people still have not been able to really see the real usefulness of twitter, and I have  been telling them that is is all in the search functionality.  Whenever there is a topic or question I have, I can immediately find people that share that interest and can have a dialog with them.  Must recently, I have been facinated with the debate around HTML5 and mobile.  Here is my search on Twitter:

Once searching for this topic, I can have direct conversations with those that are experts or interested as well with the subject.

As we all waited patiently for the Third Quarter of the Super bowl on Sunday to see for the first time Google’s brand ad as part of their media strategy, it dawned on me an interesting thought about how Google really does marketing in this Web 2.0 world.

We all know that after the Superbowl on the following weekend starts the Vancouver2010 Olympics ( #VO2010, #Olympics, #Van2010). Even though there is a usage case  for people  to use search the web during the superbowl, it may not be as much high-density searching as we we are going to probably see globally during the Olympics.  Google’s ad campaign was considered Brand building, but given the fact that Google has over 70% of the search penetration in most countries around the world and on average more then 50%, most likely people at some point during the Olympics are most likely going to be coming to Google and searching for an event information, results, etc… anyway regardless of brand building. Why was it so important to start this now when Google has made a statement they do not believe in this form of advertising in the past?

Up until now, Google has not been spending money on traditional media. Moreover, for an event like the Olympics,  sponsors are dishing out 100′s of Millions of $$$ for brand building. Google has traditionally used search and its own assets in search results at the top of the page as their form of marketing.  As they have said, “We are not keen on tweaking the organic results, but always like to follow their regimented strategic algorithms for determining what gets on the top of the pages”.  Some of the best marketing during the Olympics is going to come through Search during the weeks the events are live.  What I found interesting was that Google has really built up  its own strategy as a method to get the maximum exposure to their own properties without spending money on traditional media.    Have you seen their initiative around Google Earth and the 3D creations of all the different venues as a form of sponsorship?  Google offered to do these 3D models of the venues as a service for the Olympics Events.  I find this a very interesting offer, but can only imagine that the real reason behind this is to give themselves good ranking if the Olympics puts these links on the pages of Olympics site.  They become the masters of their own game, a way to use their own algorithms to finesse the system to give Google assets high-ranking during the events; thus driving traffic to Google maps for visitors to find local information on the go during the events.  With the billions of Dollars spent by the sponsors during the events, Google may have just again gotten away with a kind-of-freebie for its own marketing efforts to potential spoof the traditional marketing system.  This is only my guess, but it somehow makes sense to me. Would love the gamet of SEO experts out there to comment on this if you can?

Back to the Superbowl…..so then why did they buy advertising the week before?  Again I am only thinking and guessing and I do not have facts to support this, but again it makes sense to me in the greater scheme of things this kind of thinking:

If Google is getting all this search traffic during the Olympics for somewhat free at the expense of the traditional sponsors by leveraging their own algorithms to their own advantage, it might just kick-up a stir amongst traditional media  in the effect that Google using its own engine to get marketing value and  not spending money on traditional media.  ” Oh No”, they can say….. did you see we do spend money on traditional media as well. Did you see our ads that ran last week?  So by spending money on traditional media from time and again makes for a good balanced media strategy when the pundits start to sniff…..Smart I would think.

Again, I am only thinking from the standpoint of business strategy and it makes perfect sense to master mind the shell game of spending money on different media.  In this case for them,  the pea is under all the shells?…… for us, maybe there never was a pea?

It was very funny, now that CES is winding down, I felt that the “tsunami” of news about Nexus One would stop hitting me in the face. Yes- there is the constant faucet of Twitter about the new Android device, but there is an equal number of discussions about other devices as well. I like hearing the balance of debate about iPhone, Blackberry, Palm and others.  It even seems quite natural that  the other device manufactures  have formed strategic alliances with Google for search, but maintain their own platforms to bring a different flavor to the mobile world.

Given that Google has greater then 70% of the search traffic share in the US and over 50% globally….they do have the ability to market themselves all the time, and make it clear there value proposition of their products front and center.  It has become routine in our lives to use Google as a search engine…..  it is even a “VERB”.

Getting back to my story…. This evening,  I went to Google to check out something on Google Maps, and searched “Google Maps”.  Yes- it has been my mapping search of default these days.  Even though  I used to be a big fan of MapQuest, Yellowpages and others,  it has just become routine for me just to use  Google out of pure convenience.  This  again is a key factor and asset they have going for them all the time.  It validates why search is so powerful as the first point of the User-Interface we all use, and Google is clearly leveraging their search asset to drive business leads to their other services and products.  I guess why would they not do this?  It is only smart business practices.

Well what I found was shocking.  The first results for Google Maps  search was the Nexus One from the Google News…. [See picture below]  It was not the Google Maps product or something pertaining to this, but it was traffic to drive me to that feature on the Nexus One.

The only results on the page were about “Google” ( www.google.com) .  None  of their Strategic Partners?  No iPhone with Google Maps? etc… As this was one of the key features for many of their Partners, developer communities, it is very clear that Google has an incredible position to trump the very partners now with Google maps when it comes to marketing the feature with their new device.  So as a company that partners with Google to embed maps into product as part of your core business, you must have a very careful strategy on how you market Maps and Location based services as part of your product. It is clear that some of that marketing  spend could even drive traffic to Google’s mobile initiatives.

I tried to find “iPhone and Google maps” as one of the results as this should be very relevant today.  Well, I looked on page 2 of the search results and then finally found a reference for iPhone at the bottom of the second page. Not many of us users go to the second page.

I then wanted to see what Google Maps search result would be on the site GoogleminusGoogle ( www.startupbin.com).  I found these results.

This time we do see iPhone.  It is #6 in the search results behind Wikipedia, etc…. Not many bloggers sites or third party developer sites talking about Google Maps, and no other handset manufactures on the first page.

So from now on, regardless of the mobile device we own….. any time we look up any of those Google Services, we will get information about Android and Nexus…. It is just the way it is going to be I guess.   There is clearly a price for using Free services as part of your product strategy.  In the case of Google, their ROI for the Free offer is clearly leveraging your marketing spend and distribution to continually drive more traffic back to Google.

Here is the leak of the Droid page….. As you can see on the right hand side, Droid is launching Google Voice Search.
Was it not so that Microsoft had search exclusivity with Verizon and Bing…. How did this happen?

TechTree India writies about the new release of Googles Gmail for Android and iPhones below.

I am excited to see that even with all the GaGa only about iPhone Apps ( understandably so, but) that there are new announcements every day on some of the most practical usage cases of mobile linked to web development and the mobile browser.

As it does make sense to have an application based strategy, there is still a lot to be said about the browsing experience off of the

OpenSource Webkit ( Safari) browser that is used on Android/iPhones/Nokia devices and many more.  As the browser is equivalent to web browsing we experience on PC’s, having a mobile experience that lends itself to the smaller screen size and the user interface of a mobile device is a very smart approach for scaling your existing web/publishing digital strategy to mobile.

I am a very active user of Gmail on both my PC and Device and find that the hardware does not matter anymore. What matters is my seemless ability to connect to the services that I use frequently and email is something that is extemely important for me to have virtually on all the time and extendable in a very usable form from either my PC or my Nokia E71.    I did find it strange that Google has only launched this for iPhone and for Android, when it would make sense to have this for all devices that support webkit from the starting point.  I am sure we will see the announcement for Nokia support in the near future.

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Gmail has announced a new web interface for iPhone and Android platform based mobile web browsers. Built over a new engine, this Gmail Mobile interface closely resembles the Gmail Desktop version. The whole mail browsing, reading and composing experience has become faster, even over weak network connections.

The user interface has been optimized for snazzier inbox, a new ‘floaty bar’ and offline Gmail support. The new floaty bar allows archiving, deleting or more options for the email like Mark as Unread, Add star or Report as Spam. This floaty bar follows as one scrolls down further to select more emails. Navigation and display of threaded email conversations has been simplified and made faster.

Searching specific mails quickly is possible by poking the Magnifier button representing search. More messages can be viewed by hitting ‘Show more messages’ and the page hardly takes half a second to load more emails.

The new Gmail for Mobile is available on Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices with firmware 2.2.1 or higher. All Android-powered phones are supported.

The iPhone OS 3.0 brings landscape keyboard support in the Mail application but it still takes a while to load messages. Scrolling between the messages often results in sore fingers. Also, search emails and labels are still difficult to use. However, the Gmail team has made many Gmail fans happy with the new desktop-like mobile web interface iPhone and Android platform.

I was completely blown off my chair when I searched on Google for Facebook, Barak Obama came up as #2. I was even more surprized when I searched on Google for Twitter Barak Obama came up #2 again. It is amazing on the ability to embrace SEO for common social media products and services such that a single participant can get such powerful results. I wonder how these links will continue to remain in that position, but are we dealing with pure link-matching here?

Barak Obama and facebook SEO

So when we think of mobile marketing and facebook, Barak Obama comes out ahead of Facebook’s mobile service, Facebook News, Facebook in Wikipedia.