Google increases India focus launches Labs and Local Search
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If you are one of google’s followers then you would know about google’s all famous labs which showcases google’s products in beta and allows users to test these products.
Google launches India centric labs.
Google labs has now gone Indian i.e. an India centric google labs can now be accessed at http://labs.google.co.in. According to the release Google Labs™ is a technology playground for products that are in the process of development and require market feedback to improve. An india centric google labs is an indication of how important and upcoming the indian internet market is for google.
Currently Google has launched 2 products under the google labs i.e. an Indic onscreen keyboard and google Indic transliteration.
Google enters local search!
Google has also launched local search for India. Now this should put the cat among the pigeons as there are already three heavily funded players in guruji, justdial and asklaila (we have written about them earlier here, here, here and here) trying to conquer the local search market and there are a bunch of promising startups like burrp, onyomo and tolmolbol (we have covered them here, here and here).
So how will google getting into local search affect the market?
Well its google and if google enters a market then its sure to make competitors in that market run for cover in that market.
So how is google approaching local search?
Google is playing the role of an aggregator its aggregating all the local content available out there. The best example is when you search for poison in mumbai of google local search the results shows reviews and ratings from burrp! I guess all the effort made by burrp users to create original reviews is benefitting google!
What could be the future of google local search?
Also an interesting thing pointed out by contentsutra here is that google local search terms and conditions points to the google maps terms and conditions. Now is that by mistake? Or is it because google local search is in beta? I dont think so!
We had blogged about earlier of how google was using crowdsourcing to create local maps in India. I expect these maps to form an important part of local search results. Imagine searching a place on google local search and this is what your result shows:
- Address of the Place
- Reviews about the Place
- Map based location of the place with landmarks on how to get there!
In order to build the database of local businesses google has also launched Google Local Business Centre which is available at www.google.co.in/local/add and will allow any business to add its information to Google Local for free. When users search on Google Local Search, the listed business information will be displayed.
With the reach that a google search has in India it will be as simple as putting a link on the google home page to get local businesses to list themselves. Now with this move im sure some of the funded startups into local search will come under real threat as competing with google will take more than just funds.
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I agree with your last words. I think indian search startup will get red heat traction. And no one startup will get acquire by google because google already has huge database of sites, indian pics[all] and the rest.
If they integrate click-to-call functionality then its exciting to see how other startups react to this mammoth google.
They can also add youtube videos to search page for hotels, restaurant and tourist place Quires.
And when start getting heat they might wat web 2.0 strategy to cool down.