Eric Mauskopf, Business Development, YouTube

Eric Mauskopf, Business Development, YouTube is delivering the opening keynote on Day Two of the Broadband LATAM conference, taking place on 2 – 3 July 2013 at the Grand Hyatt, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ahead of the show we speak to him about his role at YouTube, what he’s working on right now and what YouTube plans are for future growth.

First up, what excites you most about your role at YouTube?

I was fortunate to join YouTube at the beginning of our mobile efforts, when we were working with operators to bring video to phones. We did not lack for sceptics, but we worked hard and delivered an engaging video experience that users could enjoy at home or on the go. People watch more than 25 per cent of all YouTube videos on their mobile device, and this number keeps growing. YouTube’s device partnerships will be a catalyst for even more users to experience YouTube in the years to come.

I believe we are playing a key role in changing how the world is informed and entertained. With more than seven billion people on earth, only two billion have ever accessed the internet, and only one billion have smartphones. Our device efforts are the likely means of reaching those people who have not yet had access to internet services. As the past years have shown us, once you give people access to information and commerce, they innovate in ways we could not have expected and end up changing the world.

What’s the tech gadget that you can’t live without at the moment?

My smartphone has become an integral part of my everyday life but I think the real question for me is what apps can’t I live without? There are probably ten apps I depend upon throughout the week. One of my favourite new apps is “Get It Now”, which matches customers who’d like to have an item delivered with couriers and bike messengers who have the free capacity to deliver this item. I tend to use it for delivering food from my favourite San Francisco restaurants that haven’t arranged their own delivery service.

What cool new things are you working on right now?

Over the past year, I helped incubate a new business focused on cross platform multi-screen experiences, the YouTube app on your smartphone or tablet can automatically pair with the YouTube experience on your SmartTV. This enables seamless sharing of content through our “send to TV” feature, selecting videos on your mobile screen that you’d like to view on your connected TV screen, while using your mobile screen for command and control or queuing up the next video to watch.

Where are the most promising opportunities for growth for YouTube in the next couple of years?

The majority of my attention is focused on leading our emerging market device partnership efforts, where a tremendous number of users are coming online for the first time, and primarily doing so on mobile devices.  Working with operators and device manufacturers to enable a good YouTube experience from day one of a user’s internet exposure is key to this mission. With 72 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute, content discovery is of utmost importance. Depending on the region and language, different YouTube content will be more relevant to those users. Whether it’s a feature phone, smartphone, tablet, or connected TV, we want to surface the content users’ care most about to the screen closest to their eyes.

YouTube has increased its focus on monetising content in recent years? Would you explore models that would remove in-video advertising for consumers?

Today, there are more than one million channels generating advertising revenue on YouTube. Our goal is to give video creators more flexibility to monetise and distribute their content to reach the fan communities that made their channels a hit, including our recently announced plans for a self-service subscription model.

My TV, Blu-ray player, console and phone are all from different manufacturers but all have custom YouTube interfaces. Why are all of these necessary?

The TV is often the largest and most beautiful screen in the home for enjoying videos. Regardless of your brand of TV, game console, or phone, you should be able to enjoy YouTube on any device without having to re-learn how to use the application for that specific device. That’s simply not the case at the moment. With new features like our “send to TV” that automatically pair your phone and your TV, and efforts with partners to improve latency and performance, we are actively working to simplify the experience across the device ecosystem.

1 Gbps broadband is coming to Provo, Utah – probably

Google has revealed plans to brings its super-fast broadband project ‘Google Fiber’ to the city of Provo, Utah, by acquiring the city’s existing fibre network for a nominal fee of $1.

The agreement with Provo city council (owner of the existing iProvo network) is not complete yet however.

It is dependent on a vote by the city council scheduled for today (Tuesday 23rd April), although reports suggest that the city council is overwhelmingly in favour of the deal.

If it goes ahead, Google plans to commence network upgrades immediately, and will start offering its free 5 Mbps service to every home connected to the iProvo network in late 2013.

The search giant plans to roll out its high-speed 1Gbps service and IPTV service ‘Google Fiber TV’ at a later date.

Kai U. Wulff, access field development director, Google

Kai U. Wulff, access field development director, Google is speaking on Day Two of the LTE Africa conference, taking place on 9th-10th July 2013 in Cape Town. Ahead of the show, we speak to him to find out more about his role, and why he is excited about Africa and its potential for growth.

In his keynote address at Mobile World Congress in 2012, Google’s Eric Schmidt declared that his company’s mission was to reach, “the next five billion”. Of the world’s population of seven billion, only two billion are online, presenting a huge opportunity.

One of the great Greenfield areas is, of course, Africa. According to Informa WBIS statistics only 4.27 per cent of households on the continent have fixed-line broadband internet access. While over 70 per cent have mobile phone coverage, this is almost exclusively basic feature phones – the seemingly near ubiquitous smartphone world of the US and Europe is an adventure that is only just about to start.

Clearly Google has a desire to help get the continent of Africa online as quickly and efficiently as possible and accelerating that process is the task of Kai U. Wulff, access field development director for Google, who is delivering a keynote address on Day Two of the LTE Africa conference, taking place on 9th-10th July 2013 in Cape Town.

Wulff says he is driven by Google’s famous mission statement, “to organise the world’s information.” “You can only do this if [people are] brought online,” he says. “The second part of our mission statement is to make information universally accessible, and it can’t be universal if it’s limited to sub-set of people.”

Google is not a charity of course, and it naturally has a vested interest in growing its market, which Wulff admits. “Of course, Google is an internet company, so why wouldn’t we want to promote anything that increases the usage of the internet, as that what makes our company.” However, Wulff insists that his role is not to promote Google but to promote internet access in general. “My focus is not to bring people online to use Google products. Whether they want to use our products or not, it is my job is to bring more people online and then give them a much better experience online.”

But is internet access really a priority for people who might have more pressing concerns that sharing something on Google+? Actually, Wulff is certain that internet access is crucial for improving the lifestyles of those in Africa. “In today’s world I could not live without the internet in my job, so how can we expect to help to develop a continent if we are depriving them from access to the biggest source of information? You can’t solve the problem of poverty without giving people an incentive to use the internet. It may be a different incentive to the way the people in the Western world have it – people use it for pure entertainment, or a way to spend their money. In Africa it’s about how it makes their lives better.”

He gives the simple example of a tomato seller who can go online to check the optimal prices that he can sell his produce for, without having to spend a large amount of time physically travelling to the market. “I think that’s a tangible improvement in lifestyle.”

Indeed he thinks that there are many in the West who might start to worry about competition from Africa once it really starts to get online.  “If we give them access to the internet and give them proper tools some people might start to worry about competition from those markets.”

For that to happen though Africa needs to have move online local presence. One of the things that concerns him is what he refers to as the ‘trade imbalance’ of content. “I’m a bean counter by trade, I’m not a techie. As a bean counter you learn that no market can be sustained if you have a constant trade imbalance. If you look at the internet and Africa then there’s a massive trade imbalance – 99 per cent of the usage is downstream. [That] can’t be healthy long term.”

It’s not just that imported content is not as relevant as local content he says, it’s also important for content to be stored and maintained locally. “It’s distorting the whole picture. It’s distorting the peering costs, the incentives that people have. I think it’s paramount that people put their content online and put it on the continent. This might be controversial because we have a lot of data centres in the US, but I think we have to create more local content in Africa and keep it there.”

Aside from simple coverage, one of the reasons that content sharing is not popular in Africa is cost. In the West, while we might complain about our data bundles we are used to being able to upload our pictures and videos without normally incurring large costs. But Wullf points out that in Africa every picture you might upload costs money and will compete with you being able to do something online that is important for the basic necessities of daily life. “That’s one of the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing,” he says. “To make usage easier, faster and hopefully cheaper.”

One of the key areas that Wulff is focussed is to try and promote network sharing agreements between telcos to make a more efficient use of infrastructure. Duplication of effort is, as he frankly puts it, “really stupid”. “[If] everybody has his own masts, his own backhaul, his own generator you’re tripling the cost to the market. Especially when you’re talking fibre deployments because one fibre deployment has [effectively] unlimited capacity and [instead] you have three fibre running out at a very high cost. It would be like everyone who has a supermarket building their own road network. It doesn’t really make sense.”

Aptly then what Wullf is working on is improving the lines of communication between telcos. “Before you run three fibre lines up a hill, think about it. Speak to each other,” he advises.

This cooperation could really reap benefits for everyone in the eco-system. “Only a very small portion of Africa is covered, so if we were to deploy the capital a little bit more efficiently across the continent then everybody wins – more users, more usage, more money for the operators at lower operation costs, and lower prices for the end users.”

With much work to be done in terms of bringing basic mobile coverage to Africa some might see LTE as a luxury, but Wulff thinks that LTE is actually a great fit. “It’s about cost-per-bit. It’s that simple. Cost-per-bit delivers. The first high capacity IP MPLS networks that Siemens ever deployed with state of the art technology was in Nairobi – it wasn’t in New York City or Berlin, it was in Nairobi. Why would somebody deploy technology that has a higher cost per bit with the argument that it’s ‘good enough’ for Africa? You always go for the tech that offers the lowest cost per bit.”

He does concede that it’s unlikely to make sense to bring LTE to rural areas, and that initially LTE will focus on the high revenue markets. However, it should enable Africa to essentially bypass the slow evolution of mobile networks that the West experienced as it moved from 2G, then 3G to 4G.

Putting a techie hat on for a moment, Wulff says that LTE ability to lower costs while maintaining quality is one of its key assists for Greenfield areas. “You can do air interface per device ,per end user, so you could theoretically have one LTE networks and five operators and they could sell five different offerings based on QoS, depending on how much they want to spend on their air interface. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. I’m not representing an operator, but I like LTE from that aspect.”

Ultimately, Wullf comes across as being very optimistic for the prospects in the region. He warns that African operators should be careful to tailor their offerings for their own market and not simply try and mimic what has worked elsewhere. “That’s [been] one of the problems in some of the deployments, where basically the business case is just a copy/paste of developed markets. And then people figure out that this was not a great idea. We need to depart from the idea that a five-year old version of a European business case will work in Africa. It’s something that needs to be very, very specific and then it can be truly rewarding for everybody.”

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Google’s “predatory distribution of Android” at below-cost makes it difficult for other OS providers to compete, said Fairsearch

A pressure group with members including Microsoft, Oracle and Nokia has filed a complaint with the European Commission claiming that Google has used anti-competitive practices to dominate the mobile space.

Under the Fairsearch name, the group claims that Google has unfairly cemented its control over consumers’ mobile internet experience and in online advertising for mobile.

The search giant’s Android platform runs on 70 per cent of devices shipped at the end of 2012, according to Strategy Analytics, Fairsearch noted, and Google has a 96 per cent share of the mobile search advertising the market, according to research agency eMarketer. The group also accuses Google of using “deceptive conduct to lock out competition in mobile”.

The group said that Google’s dominance in the smartphone operating system market came from its policy of giving Android to device manufacturers free of charge. Yet the group claims these same device manufacturers are forced to pay costs for Google services such as Maps, YouTube and Play that are required to be prominently placed on the phone. This, Fairsearch said, hinders rival app and service providers.

“Google is using its Android mobile operating system as a ‘Trojan Horse’ to deceive partners, monopolise the mobile marketplace, and control consumer data,” said Thomas Vinje, Brussels-based counsel to the FairSearch coalition.

“We are asking the Commission to move quickly and decisively to protect competition and innovation in this critical market. Failure to act will only embolden Google to repeat its desktop abuses of dominance as consumers increasingly turn to a mobile platform dominated by Google’s Android operating system.”

The complaint added that Google’s “predatory distribution of Android” at below-cost makes it difficult for other OS providers to compete with the mobile platform.

Microsoft itself was once the target of similar anti-competitive allegations. In 2004, the European Union found Microsoft guilty of abuse of its dominant position in the PC market.

Worldwide devices are on pace to total 2.4 billion units in 2013

The number of tablets sold globally will surpass the number of PCs sold by 2017, according to analyst firm Gartner. Sales of Android smartphones are also expected to triple between 2012 and 2017, the firm forecast.

More than 2.9 billion mobile or desk-based devices will be shipped in 2017, up from 2.4 billion today, according to Gartner. However, the mix of these devices will significantly change over the forecast period, the firm warned, as tablet devices become cheaper and more powerful. In fact, PC and laptop shipments are set to fall around 20 per cent, from 341 million shipped in 2012 to 271 million in 2017.

“While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet, especially those who use either or both for work and play, most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

“As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis.”

Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, added that growth in the tablet segment will not be limited to mature markets alone.

“Users in emerging markets who are looking for a companion to their mobile phone will increasingly choose a tablet as their first computing device and not a PC.”

Tablets are not the only device type that is seeing aggressive price erosion; smartphones are also becoming more affordable,

Of the 1.875 billion mobile phones to be sold in 2013, Gartner predicts that one billion units will be smartphones, compared with 675 million units in 2012.

As a result of the changing buyer behaviour, Google and Apple will profit at the expense of smaller players. Google, which shipped 497 million Android devices in 2012, is expected to almost triple that figure over the following five years, to sell 1,47 billion devices in 2017. Apple will also thrive; the firm sold 213 million iOS and Mac OS devices in 2012, and is expected to more than double that to 504 million in 2017. Even Microsoft is set to prosper over the coming four years; the firm will see shipments rise from 346 million in 2012 to 570 million in 2017, according to Gartner’s forecasts.

Google’s wacky Fiber Poles project

Among Google’s April Fool’s Day jokes yesterday was a spoof video for its Google Fiber blog, which promised to bring fibre speeds to anyone willing to plug their laptop into a box at the base of a utility pole carrying Google’s fibre network.

Described as “Google Fiber Poles“, the idea has already attracted genuine interest from some commenters and industry observers, despite its farcical intentions, highlighting a very real customer need for high-speed connectivity outside the home.

Other April’s Fools Day jokes created by Google for 2013 include a treasure mode for Google Maps, the closure of YouTube, and an intriguing smell-based service called ‘Google Nose“.

Mohamad Mourad, Regional Manager Gulf, Google

Mohamad Mourad, Regional Manager Gulf, Google is delivering a keynote of the opening day of the Broadband MEA conference, taking place on the 19th-20th March 2013 at the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel, Dubai, UAE. Ahead of the show we speak to him about his role and what opportunities he sees for Google in the region.

What excites you most in your role as Regional Manager Gulf, Google?

For me, Google is all about doing cool things that matter, about thinking big, then thinking bigger. We are lucky in the Gulf to get to work with some of the most powerful brands and teams. I am always inspired by the people I meet with – from entrepreneurs and developers to content creators and everyday users.

How important is online video for the Middle East region?

The Middle East region is a global leader on YouTube with 285 million views a day, putting the region in the second place globally behind the U.S. and ahead of Brazil. In addition to that, more than two hours of content are uploaded onto the platform every single minute.

Naturally, much of the content coming in from and being consumed by the Middle East is in Arabic, which is why providing locally relevant content was a priority. We developed local domains in eight countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. By localising the YouTube experience, we made it easier for people to find popular videos in their country along with those that are rising in popularity which were locally relevant to their language and interests.

In the Middle East alone, YouTube playbacks grew by more than 28 per cent between October 2011 and October 2012; demonstrating the impact that video content has in the region and how important it is to make it accessible.

Saudi Arabia also leads the world in the number of daily video views conducted on mobile devices with mobile views making up 25 per cent of total YouTube views around the world. In fact, YouTube traffic through mobile devices has more than tripled since 2011.

The internet was lauded for the effect it had in supporting the Arab spring over the last two years. However, in the face of censorship from governments, can technology continue to have the same impact?

Free expression is a core Google value and critical to our mission to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. At Google we have a bias in favour of people’s right to free expression in everything we do. We are driven by a belief that more information generally means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual. But we also recognise that freedom of expression can’t be — and shouldn’t be — without some limits. The difficulty is in deciding where those boundaries are drawn. For a company like Google, with services in more than 100 countries – all with different national laws and cultural norms – it’s a challenge we face many times every day.

For all our various products, services and platforms, we work hard to create a community which everyone can enjoy and can enable people to express different opinions. This can be a challenge because what is OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere.

It is important to note that Google is not, and should not become, the arbiter of what does and does not appear on the web.

How important is the creation of local content for the Middle East region?

Local content creation is on the top of our priorities in the MENA region. Creating a web that is relevant to the average Arabic speaking internet user is vital, particularly when you consider that the total Arabic content on the web represents just three per cent of the total digital content online— while Arabic speakers make up more than five per cent of the global population. We have launched initiatives aimed at just that, with last year’s  “Arabic Web Days” – a month long series of online and offline events dedicated to boosting the amount of Arabic content on the web, in collaboration with several international, regional and local partners.

With video being a huge star in MENA, eight different countries in the region have their own local YouTube domain where locally relevant content, including top videos and top channels for each country can be viewed.

Numerous businesses and other entities have channels that act as a tool for education and news. In the UAE, important figures such as Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashed Al Maktoum communicate via video about their initiatives. Competitions such as YouTube’s Your Film Festival enable talented directors from the region to submit their short films for voting and a chance to develop them into a feature-length movie. Media entities such as The Dubai Press Club upload videos of important discussions that highlight current issues in the media, which help garner awareness for local issues, and much more.

As the world goes mobile, what opportunities do the wide-scale global LTE rollouts offer for the Google?

2012 was a great year for mobile search. As consumers continued to turn to their mobile devices, we also saw marketers embrace mobile in a big way. Marketers have moved beyond asking why they should be on mobile, and are now talking about how they can maximize their mobile efforts. We fully expect that this will continue in 2013, and that mobile search will continue to play a key role in every advertiser’s marketing mix.

We live in a multi-screen world now where people are constantly connected, moving back and forth between different devices throughout the day. Search plays a key role in helping people pick up where they left off between devices, with 63 per cent searching again on the second device when they continue an online activity. As this cross-device behaviour continues to grow, there’s also an important opportunity for marketers to reach customers on search as a way of bridging experiences across devices, particularly on mobile.

Because the mobile device arena has evolved so much, even within the last year, we expect that in 2013 we’ll continue to see devices change and proliferate at breakneck speed. The lines between devices are quickly blurring, particularly between laptops and tablets with the introduction of hybrids like ultrabooks and convertible tablets. In the near future, we think we’ll see all devices have capabilities like touchscreens and GPS, with lines between device form factors continuing to blur. As that happens, mobile search will need to get smarter to better understand user context beyond devices – such as whether someone on the go is looking for a nearby restaurant for lunch – so that we can deliver the best, most relevant ads. We think the industry will make big strides in the next few years to better understand user context based on signals such as location and time of day so that we can help advertisers reach the right person with the right message.

What’s your prediction for the most exciting development of 2013?

Mobile, mobile, mobile! For those marketers who have yet to fully dive into mobile, I would say that it’s not too late. Mobile search is becoming increasingly crucial to the way your customers interact with you, so the first thing I’d recommend is that marketers make sure they’re present on mobile search and provide customers with a good mobile experience with things like click-to-call and mobile-optimised websites. We also see the trend of watching video on mobile growing exponentially – so it’s important that desktop or laptop video experiences are adapted or created on mobile.

What piece of tech could you not leave the house without?

That has to be my Nexus phone of course!

Handsets running Firefox OS are expected on the market in early 2013

The chief executives of Telecom Italia, Telenor, Telefónica, America Movil and Deutsche Telekom were all on hand at a Mozilla press conference on Sunday evening in Barcelona to voice their enthusiasm for the Firefox browser developer’s new HTML5-based smartphone OS.

Speakers at the event made a number of pointed references to the dominance of Apple and Google, without actually naming them, as they promised that Firefox would restore operator influence to the mobile data services value chain.

Franco Bernabé said that operators will “benefit from more control over the ecosystem while Cesar Alierta of Telefónica said that the new OS would “change the prevailing value chain”.

The strongest words came from Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs who warned that “the internet should not be controlled by any one or two companies,” and that, “we shouldn’t have one or two companies that approve every bit of content [on smartphones].” Kovacs added that Mozilla wants to “level the playing field”.

Mozilla’s Jay Sullivan said that the firm wants to enable a broad range of application stores for the new OS, including those owned and billed by operators.

Alcatel One Touch, ZTE, Huawei and LG are onboard as device vendors for the new OS, with ZTE likely to be the first to bring a device to market. The emphasis will be on low-cost devices, with America Movil CEO Marco Quatorze suggesting they will be “a really good alternative for customers that don’t have smartphones today.”

Telefónica will begin selling devices running the new OS in Latin America and Spain in the summer this year, while Telenor will offer then in its Central European markets sometime in the second half of the year. Deutsche Telekom will launch in Poland in the summer.

DT CEO Rene Obermann seemed keen to downplay the operator-focus of the new OS somewhat, saying: “This is not about us, it’s about Mozilla”.

Apple's Maps application has experienced serious teething problems

In the wake of the problems surrounding Apple’s own Maps application Google has now launched its own mapping app for the iOS platform.

Although Google Maps was preinstalled on previous versions of the iOS platform, Google did not offer a version of its app for the latest iteration, iOS6. Instead Apple, having dispensed with a native installation of Google Maps, created its own mapping application in a move to take more control of the assets on its devices.

The plan backfired, however, and several glitches in the app were exposed. Apple CEO Tim Cook conceded that users are better off using rival services, and apologised for the glitches in the Cupertino firm’s own offering.

Google has now responded to Apple users calling out for the reintroduction of the firm’s Maps app by rolling out a free Google Maps for iOS6 app in more than 40 countries and 29 languages via Apple’s App Store.

“The app shows more map on screen and turns mobile mapping into one intuitive experience,” explained Daniel Graf, director at Google Maps for Mobile. “It’s a sharper looking, vector-based map that loads quickly and provides smooth tilting and rotating of 2D and 3D views.”

He added that the app offers voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation, live traffic conditions and more than one million public transit stops.

The firm has also released the Google Maps SDK for iOS, and a simple URL scheme to help developers use Google Maps when building their apps.

Google Wallet

Google has improved the integration of its mobile wallet application with online retailers in a bid to stimulate mobile financial transactions.

From this week, on sites that accept Google Wallet, users will no longer need to enter their credit or debit card number, billing address or other payment information as the data is already stored in the secure application. To date, Google Wallet has only been able to carry out transactions in physical stores equipped with an NFC terminal, limiting its uptake.

“Typically, on mobile websites, you need to key in 17-20 fields of information on a small screen while having to click and scroll through multiple pages to provide shipping and billing information. It’s no wonder up to 97 per cent of mobile shoppers abandon their mobile shopping carts,” the firm said.

Google Wallet means users can: “Pay without entering your credit or debit card number, billing address, or other payment information — it’s already securely stored in your Google Wallet.” Users can also view credit and debit cards, shipping addresses and transaction history in one place online.

Over the summer, Google launched a cloud-based version of its wallet for the US market, allowing users to add Visa, American Express and Discover credit and debit cards, as well as MasterCard, to their wallets.

There is also a rumour circulating this week that Google is in the process of finalising a physical payment card that syncs with any account connected to Google Wallet. Peer to peer payments and public transport ticketing are also thought to be in the works as Google goes up against the likes of PayPal and Square.

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