Tag Archives: Google
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Crowdsourced, accurate maps
The World Bank – Google collaboration seems a brilliant idea; key to its success is how national government react. But if even some cooperate . . . . Lack of knowledge of social infrastructure like schools and hospitals makes it more costly when natural disasters strike, setting back recovery efforts, sometimes by months. And lack [...]
Big data, location-based apps and smartphones
We’ve been thinking about the potential of big data (large, continuing streams of computer-readable data) for development applications. There is nothing about development in the marketing campaign below, but can any zealous privacy advocate identify a problem with it? A mobile campaign by Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide, which is based in Chicago, places the ads [...]
Full e commerce, courtesy of Google
In our work on mobile more than voice services in 2008-10, we pointed to the need for delivery services, if e commerce was to catch in emerging Asia. Google is offering to close the gap, for consumers and retailers in the US. Who will close the gap in Asia? In another foray into commerce, Google [...]
Forty percent of searches from mobile phones in India (v. 14 percent in US) says Google
Google sees mobiles as the future, especially in markets like India, according to Business Standard. Mobile Internet fastest growing vertical, says Google India MD. Listing a set of next big trends in the overall technology sector, Google India says mobile Internet is set to lead the way for the industry. As against 14 per cent [...]
Power of the default
Behavioral economics is becoming a major component of LIRNEasia’s toolkit. The discussion below refers to the decision architectures that appear to keep the money flowing into Google. But most people, of course, never make that single click. Defaults win. The role of defaults in steering decisions is by no means confined to the online world. [...]
Google to foster innovation in Egypt
Perhaps the program should have been named for Wael Ghonim. A bus branded with the Google logo will be traveling across 10 governorates in Egypt starting this week, including stops at universities in Cairo and Alexandria, scouting for the next generation of technology entrepreneurs with homegrown ideas on the scale of Facebook or LinkedIn. “We [...]
Good Google? Bad Google?
My entry to telecom policy and regulation was through the AT&T Divestiture case, where the US Department of Justice broke up the world’s largest company with my advisor, Bill Melody, as a key witness. The good guys and the bad guys were clear. While I was teaching the big Microsoft antitrust case came up and [...]
All Google searches use up 260 MW
Even countries like Sri Lanka have 300 MW energy plants. The power generated by Bhutan’s Tala dam is more than 1000 MW. Looks like the data centers are more efficient than we thought. I’ve had little time for people who criticize energy use of web search. Earlier writing was without too much data, because data [...]
In the fuss about the Motorola-Google deal, a word about the inventor of the mobile phone
Everyone has got an opinion on Google’s takeover of Motorola Mobility. But according to a report, it has the blessings of Martin Cooper, the man who invented the mobile phone. We had one post on him, but given all the effort we devote to mobile phones, that surely is not enough. One link led to [...]
The plates move in the post-PC world
It’s nice to know we’re in the post-PC world. It’s just two years since we were being asked to participate in debates about mobile vs PCs. And just one year since Steve Jobs called the PC a truck. Now the debate has shifted. We know what world we live in. Now the debate is about [...]
Trying to claw back control from Google and Apple
Part of an ongoing discussion at LIRNEasia is the tipping point from the operator-centric world of feature phones (intelligence in the center) to the operating-system-centric world of smartphones (intelligence at the edges). In the developed economies, lots of people assume the tipping point has been crossed. But the operators have not seen their “obituaries,” and [...]
ICTs in the Age of Behavior: Public diplomacy
A New York Times columnist writes about the possible use of ICTs to counter violent extremism. Not your father’s kind of public diplomacy. Being done by Google, not by a unit with Department of State. I don’t think the world’s leaders have begun to grasp the implications of unstoppable connectivity. Some people are calling this [...]
Reality of cloud computing (or how it looks at the start)
David Pogue, my favorite writer on gadgets has reviewed the first laptop made specifically for cloud computing: no hard disk, no software. Just the cloud. And the verdict is . . . The first assumption is that you’re online everywhere you go. That’s rather critical, because when it’s not online, a Chromebook can’t do much [...]
Google to offer payment by phone
We thought the emerging economies would be first past the post on this one, but it appears that the difficulties of navigating the regulatory delays and uncertainties have eroded the lead. Google will offer mobile payments with MasterCard and Citibank, according to one of the people, as well as with cellphone carriers, hardware manufacturers and [...]
Mobile broadband: Search as the new killer app?
We do not believe in the killer app. Multiple apps is what we think will drive mobile broadband. But if there be a killer, it will probably be search, as this NYT article suggests: Today, Google says mobile searches are growing as quickly as Web searches were at the same stage in the company’s early [...]
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