The past couple of days have been pretty busy in Google’s UK front. First, Google’s mobile search gets a much needed boost followed by the opening of UK’s financial portal. And lastly, YouTube has just rolled out its Partner Program to video publishers in the UK.
Google’s mobile search is now open to users located in Canada, Germany and UK while at the same providing new features that enhance users mobile search experience. One of these features is the integration of all mobile search results and organizing these results based on what the users are most likely to be looking for. Another new feature is the elimination of the need to enter the user’s local post code to search for locations. With the new feature, the postal code entered by the user for the first will be carried out as a filter for succeeding mobile searches.The next thing that Google announced was the launch of Google’s Finance portal in the UK. The new localized version of Google Finance in UK features stock prices, mutual funds, financial news, finance blogs and charts. Among the highlights of the recently opened Google Finance UK includes preferential search for UK companies and mutual funds, integration and organization of Google Finance news items by group rather than by date, interactive charts that map market data with their corresponding news stories in a single interactive chart, an easy way of tracking stock portfolios and mutual funds, among other features.
And lastly YouTube’s partner program which enables video content uploaders to implement AdSense link units on their YouTube videos has expanded to cover UK users as well. This is a good time for UK based YouTube members to start monetizing their content.
So while Yahoo was busy working expanding on its Asian network Google is veering away from Asia and instead is intensifying its clout in the European market. This is understable since Google is more interested with finding the right partners for its possible entry to the mobile phone business. And the best place to look for mobile phone partners is of course in Asia, the cell phone region of the world.
Looking at these two points from a bigger angle, we can deduce that in terms of advertising and profit generating benefits, and with the weakening US economy, Europe is perhaps the best place to generate more revenue and Google has chosen wisely and strategically with its move.
