Does The Voda-Google Tie-Up Disappoint? You Betcha! : An Exclusive Look At Google’s Mobile Search Service In Europe
Emma Mohr-McClune
Vodafone’s Dutch OpCo is the first in western Europe to unveil Google search within Vodafone live!, and this first glance is rich in insights into Vodafone’s collaboration strategy with the Internet giants. Google search will open up a chink in the walled garden, but the floodgates are firmly in place.
After months of speculation, we finally get to see how, and to what extent, Vodafone is prepared to share live! real estate with the mighty Google: On May 21, Vodafone Netherlands launched Google search within Vodafone live!
Undoubtedly packed with significance, this event still only merits a neutral stance, as far as we’re concerned. While embracing the off-portal wide Internet, the Vodafone Group has managed to tame the giant, Google, with a clear on-portal results bias. Whether or not end-users will love this approach remains to be seen.
Theories regarding the positioning of Google search within Vodafone live! have been rife since the two companies announced a partnership at 3GSM 2006. Vodafone Netherlands is the first European OpCo to unveil this relationship in action and the results tell us much about Vodafone’s strategy and approach to off-portal discovery.
The Google search logo and link is placed as a horizontal banner, top-of-page, taking up approximately 15-20% of the initial view. The rest of this page will be devoted to Startpagina (a popular Dutch content portal) links including a Startpagina search engine. Vodafone NL has allowed Google preferential portal placing, but it must share the customer-facing privilege with a local alternative. White label search vendors have been hinting for some time that European operators will host multiple mobile search options simultaneously, and this certainly lends credence to that theory.
As previously announced, there is a mobile advertising revenue share agreement with Google sponsored links search results, however, it should be noted that mobile advertising revenue-share is an element of the Startpagina agreement, as well.
Vodafone NL has, indeed, embraced Google search, but not to the exclusion of everything else, and not without a heavy dose of on-portal bias: Competitors need only view the Google search-in-Vodafone-live! results page to get a sense of the way Vodafone intends to mould Google search to its own, on-portal agenda.
When an end-user initiates a Google search within live!, that user sees a series of search results grouped into three categories. The top-of-page category features links to Vodafone live! portal content matching the search criteria. (Critically, all Vodafone live! links will retain the end-user within the operator-controlled, on-portal environment, clearly beneficial for Vodafone’s advertising strategies going forward.) Next up is an itemized group of sponsored links, referring to links in which Google and Vodafone revenue-share on mobile advertising. Lastly, right at the bottom of the page, come the links outside Vodafone live, competitors may view this group as representing the real wide Internet of mobile-optimized Google search results.
With this approach, obviously Vodafone is seeking to protect both its on-portal premium content revenue future and the mobile advertising potential therein, but will end-users buy it? At first glance, the Google search-in-live results page is a disappointment. It lacks the design simplicity and clarity of the PC-based Google search experience, and the multiple categories of search results are confusing, non-intuitive, and unfamiliar to the hardcore Google fan. A brand-priority battle between the Vodafone signature red and the Google brand logo is also going on, and end-users will feel disoriented, and more likely to try out the Startpagina alternative with more local and Dutch language content.
Emma Mohr-McClune is a Principal Analyst at Current Analysis, responsible for coverage of European mobile consumer services. For more information on Current Analysis’ competitive response and market intelligence services, please contact VP Sales Europe, Jack Zimmerman
