Perspectives

Sometime last friday, I heard about Google’s new Local service for India. As expected, they just have two text boxes in there unlike a yahoo, where you would expect links all over the place that will get you to forget what you came to the site for.

Although I am a very critical guy, I would refrain from commenting much because I know the problems one encounters with Local and India. No, it is not technology at all. Local is a solved problem in many other countries. Data is, and there is no easy way out. Hard work and innovation is needed from the data guys if this or any other local portal is going to become useful to the layman.

I just came back from proto.in and clearly, Local is the where the buzz is. A lot of startups trying to get their piece of cake from this potentially large and untapped market opportunity.

Coming back to Google India Local, there are some disconnects. Data that works on Google maps doesnt work on India local. I am sure they are fixing it.

But, a larger thought problem these biggies need to understand is there is a thin line between what a business is and what is not. For instance, the keyword “icici atm” doesnt give me a result, but “icici bank” does. Not fair to expect the end user to know what is “local” enough to be a part of “local”. At the look of it, seems like they are sourcing their data from Indiacom (never heard of these guys before) and Infomedia (JustDial is still trying to be a Google/Yahoo all by themselves? ).

Anyways, Thanks Google for the service. Hoping you will get usable content quickly in there somehow.