Marketing Pilgrim

According to Reuters, Google’s efforts to make Google Mobile more accessible are starting to payoff.

"We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage," Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, said in an interview. "We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating.

Of course, Google’s claiming the increase comes from its launch of mobile search software for Blackberry and Nokia:

The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform Web searches on Google by eliminating initial search steps of finding a Web browser on the phone, opening the browser, waiting for network access, and getting to Google.com. By making a Google search box more convenient, mobile phone users have begun using the Internet more, the company said.

The company is now hoping to infiltrate Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software and conveniently place a Google Web search window on the home screen of Windows Mobile phones. I can hear the sobbing in Redmond from Hawaii!

But, how much credit can Google really take for the increase in mobile phone usage? At the Aloha Summit, half the attendees had Apple iPhones–one even left the laptop at home and instead relied on the iPhone for her internet needs. Even Google hints that much of the increased use of Google Mobile, comes thanks to the success of the iPhone…

Waddell said Google had seen iPhone users perform as many as 50 times more Web searches on these computer-phone devices as users of standard mobile feature phones typically do.

How much credit should we give Google and how much deserves to go to Apple?

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