OUR GOAL IS NOT TO BID FOR 3G TO GET BUSINESS-google

[V. Madhu]

For Google, which owns the world’s most visited search engine, India’s over 471 million phone subscribers provide the best opportunity to replicate its internet success and challenge rivals like Microsoft. Google India managing director Shailesh Rao spoke about how India ranks first in the global mobile search market, whether Google would participate in the 3G auctions, and how the company’s advertising revenues from the country are growing at double digit rates.

Excerpts:

Will Google bid for 3G spectrum in India?

The mobile medium is very important to us, particularly in countries such as Japan, India, US and China. We have no such plans of bidding in an auction as yet. Of the 500 million subscribers in India, around 25 million are mobile Internet users, 19 million are subset users. The users, that are actually using data are smaller but growing. We are not only focused on providing our classic services to mobile internet users but also experimenting with SMS. Recently, we came up with ‘Google SMS channels.’ So, mobile is a critical component of what we do. But in principle, our goal is not to bid for 3G to get business.