LISA: Google’s CEO Mr Larry Page demonstrated Google’s search engine working on the i-mode phone during Demo Japan 2001 in Tokyo late February. Could you tell us exactly what it is that Larry demonstrated?

David Krane: Larry demonstrated a version of the Google search engine that is optimized for users of any i-mode phone. This technology enables i-mode users to search and browse over 1.3 billion web pages.

LISA: In developing search capabilities for i-mode, did you come across what you perceived to be any uniquely Japanese problems?

David Krane: No, not really. Google already had quite a bit of experience developing both Japanese and wireless search technology. Six months ago, we released a Japanese-only version of Google, and almost a year ago, we released our first wireless search engine.

LISA: When do i-mode users officially get to use Google?

David Krane: Google’s i-mode search service is available now at http://www.google.com/imode.

LISA: i-mode has made a conscious decision not to go with WAP, instead it uses compact HTML called cHTML and claims that it makes the conversion from HTML much simpler as compared with WAP’s language. In your experience of developing the service for i-mode, do you agree that cHTML makes it easy for Web site providers to convert to i-mode?

David Krane: This is a question that is better suited for site developers themselves. All sites are different, so it would be tough to estimate the degree of difficulty translating a normal HTML site into cHTML. What we can tell you is that Google also offers HTML to cHTML translation technology via a custom-built proxy server. This back-end technology enables users of our i-mode search service to browse over 1.3 billion HTML web pages that we have in our index. We offer the same service to both users of WAP mobile phones and Palm wireless handheld computers.

LISA: It’s been six months since Google launched its Japanese language site. Do you think the fact that you had a localized Japanese site in any way helped Google to come to partnership with DoCoMo? For example, it must have made DoCoMo more easily realize Google’s capability as a search engine through its localized site.

David Krane: Google has not official announced a partnership with DoCoMo. Both companies are certainly discussing various partnership opportunities, but the announcement we made two weeks ago in Japan did not involve a relationship with NTT DoCoMo.

LISA: The number of search queries from Japan (through Google’s Japanese site) is reported to be ranked third after Germany for all queries which come to Google. What has been the response from the Japanese market to your localized Google? Can you tell us any specific comments you might have received about its functionality? Do you think Google has managed to differentiate itself from other (particularly local) competitors?

David Krane: Google’s Japanese search technology has been very well received. Specific comments include great happiness with the speed of the search engine, relevancy of the search results, the simplicity of the interface, and the comprehensiveness of the information. Google currently enables users to search over 50 million Japanese-only web pages. Most of our competitors in Japan offer more of a ‘portal’ experience, as opposed to a pure search engine. Therefore, by design, Google is naturally very different than most of our competitors, such as Goo.

LISA: Does Google see the Japanese market as part of its globalization strategy? What about other Asian markets?

David Krane: Yes, Japan is a key market in a much larger strategy to bring the Google search engine to Internet users all over the world, regardless of what platform they use to connect to the Internet (desktop PC, wireless device, etc.). We are also very interested in China, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Australia, and New Zealand. We currently have customers and partners in China (NetEase), Malaysia (ChiliPadi), and Taiwan (Yam.com).

LISA: As everybody is now aware, DoCoMo’s i-mode has been a smash hit particularly in the climate of the overall sluggish uptake so far of WAP phones in Europe and the USA. Do you consider that the opportunity to power up i-mode provides you with useful expertise? Do you see this as part of an expansion into other Asian markets?

David Krane: Today, we view our experience with i-mode as primarily beneficial to the work we are doing within the Japanese marketplace. But as the i-mode technology is expanded to new geographic markets, we anticipate that this experience will be helpful—especially in other parts of Asia.

LISA: Have you picked up any particular characteristics of the way the Japanese use search engines that are different from the Western world?

David Krane: No, not really.

LISA: Google also announced its partnership with Vizzavi (the joint venture of Vodafone and Vivendi Universal) as its default search provider. Do you at Google see 3g (third generation) mobile technology as the next big thing that the world is going to embrace?

David Krane: We are very optimistic about the potential of 3g technology, and anticipate that it will be warmly accepted by many users throughout the world.

LISA: How do you regard the role of localization in terms of globalizing your business? Does your company have in-house localization capabilities? If not, how are you dealing with Google’s localization needs?

David Krane: We work with a variety of resources to handle our localization requirements. Much of this work is done in-house, as among all employees at Google, we speak 29 different languages! Over half of our 200 employees speak more than one language. We also use a variety of outside resources, primarily for translation.

LISA: Do you have specific plans to enter into other Asian markets in the near future? How important are Asia-Pacific markets in general for Google on a long-term basis?

David Krane: Yes… we view the Asia-Pacific region as a key part of our global expansion. Our search traffic from Japanese users is currently our third most popular language on Google.com, after English and German. And we anticipate that Japanese will surpass German very shortly, because it is growing at a much faster pace.

LISA: What are the respective volumes of search traffic from English, German and Japanese users on Google.com? Do you also have similar statistics on i-mode (in this case Japanese users only)?

David Krane: We don’t break out search traffic by language or platform. I can tell you that we serve over 70 million searches per day, and over half of this traffic is to Google.com (the rest is to our partner website), and over half of this traffic comes from users outside the U.S.