Google plans to set up more development teams in Asia: tailoring products to different cultures and customs

On the evening of September 9, Beijing time, it is reported that Google plans to set up more development teams in Asian countries to customize services according to different cultures and customs of different countries.

"products developed for the US market cannot simply be translated into local languages and launched in Asian countries," said Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of Google. "to succeed in Southeast Asia and other markets, we have to invest to better understand the local culture."

Currently, Google already has a local development team in Japan that is committed to improving its search service to suit Japanese users. Lagawan said that one of the team's main tasks is to provide more search suggestions than other countries, because in Japan, users enter very concise keywords when searching. "

In addition, Google has a team in India. But in contrast to Japan, Indians like to use voice search, so the search keywords are particularly long. "in this case, the accuracy of speech recognition becomes critical," Lagawan said. moreover, India uses 20 different languages, which is even more difficult to do. "

Lagawan said that Google has realized that in some countries, it is necessary to have local teams that are well adapted to the local culture and society. To that end, Google's goal is to build such local development teams in Southeast Asia and other countries.

Statistics show that the proportion of Internet users in Southeast Asia has reached 75% (accounting for the total population) in 2021 and is growing rapidly, increasing by 40 million last year alone.

"if you look at countries such as India, Vietnam and Indonesia, their netizens are very young and almost all the new Internet users in the world come from these populations," Lagwan said. we realize that providing services to young new Internet users has always been a problem. We have also been trying to solve this problem for many years. "

In addition, Google also faces competition from competitors such as TikTok, a short video app. "there is no doubt that young people particularly like short videos," Lagwan said. " Lagwan also acknowledged the success of TikTok, but said: "We also have relatively successful and growing YouTube short videos. In many Asia-Pacific markets, its usage is very high."