No direct competition with Facebook: Google

A: For both Facebook and us, the India market is so early and so and it is so ripe with opportunities that I don’t think we are stepping on each other too much. Facebook has made some progress in the advertising solutions and certainly is doing very well, but we feel we have a very compelling offering. Google is the largest internet advertising company in the world and our solutions tend to particularly excel for customers who want to measure their performance and who want to sell products to consumers. So, we do very well with those segments.

Q: Recently Facebook did acquire WhatsApp for USD 19 billion. Mark Zuckerberg focusing on emerging markets. WhatsApp has a larger subscriber base amongst mobile messaging service providers. What kind of products is Google looking at launching to beat this kind of competition, do you have anything planned when we talk about mobile phones?

A: WhatApp to me is emblematic of series of new messaging products that are very powerful, augment traditional SMS with pictures and other media and do that at a lower cost and more flexible way. It is a great tool. Once you have acquired a customer for engaging with them and I have spoken to many Indian businesses who use it for that purpose, so that is at a different stage of the customer. It is after you have acquired a new customer it is a way of continuing to reengage with them. Our advertising solutions today focus primarily on acquiring new customers. We don’t see ourselves meaningfully directly competing with WhatsApp whether independent or as part of Fcebook.

In terms of communication solutions Google has come out with variety of new products. Google Hangout for example allows businesses to communicate with video, with one or more consumers at the same time. I think you will see more and more innovation in that area from Google. Google Plus ofcourse is a social network that has seen tremendous adoption and one of the fastest growing social networks in the world and that is another place where businesses can engage with consumers.

Finally Youtube – most people are not aware that Youtube is the second largest social network in the world. It is also the second largest search engine. So, there is a lot of opportunity for consumer engagement on Youtube both before you become customer and after.

Q: Given the high competitive nature of the internet space what kind of opportunities and challenges do you see when we talk about the small and medium business segment?

A: In the internet certainly it is very competitive. That said at the same time the market is growing so rapidly that we are not really too worried about competition. We believe it is healthy for there to be many different solutions for customers whether they are provided by local providers or us rather international companies. So, we are much more focused on delivering great solutions for small businesses than worrying about competition at this moment.