Google, Mobile Search and 2008

One of the trends I post about here is the merging of web search and mobile media. On that note there were interesting quotes from Google CEO Eric Schmidt during an analyst conference call discussing their recent billion dollar 4th quarter results.

He was asked about Google's mobile strategy and he responded that they were thinking of how mobile search, video, and video advertising could combine...and it is interesting from a political timetable that he believes this mobile search would substantially grow in 07, and begin to make a financial impact in 2008.

Here is the quote(with emphasis being mine):

“It is clear that 2007 will be the year that mobile search query traffic grows substantially.

Our current model is to use targeted text ads and we have evidence that the monetization of those ads is higher than in non-mobile uses. So it looks like the advertising revenue on a per-search query is likely to be significantly higher on mobile than on non-mobile.

As part of that, we are investing in new categories of using mobile devices. For example, YouTube content is being used and can be viewed on mobile devices in various partnerships that we’re doing. Those are as much opportunistic for us, and they’re not really driving revenue yet; although in theory, you could imagine a combination of video, video advertising on a mobile phone that would have the best entertainment value but also very, very high monetization rates.

...It’s not material today in a financial sense, and more importantly, it’s still emerging. We are making a significant investment in technology around mobile because of the growth rate of mobile and the ultimate scale of that business. You won’t really see its financial impact until ‘08."