Google Eyes Portugal, Africa

In America, Google is pretty much omnipresent. Elsewhere in the world . . . well, it’s getting there. The search engine company has announced plans to enter Portugal in order to access the African market indirectly.

Anil Hansjee, Google’s head of European corporate development, talked to Diario de Noticias about the company’s intentions; The Sydney Morning Herald offered part of the interview. “We want to enter Africa, not through fixed-line Internet access but through mobile access,” Hansjee said.

And while Google is already doing well in northern Europe – it’s experienced remarkable growth in England, and the corporation’s European hub is located in Ireland – “we think it would be easier if we worked with countries that work directly with these nations,” Hansjee continued.

“It (the Portuguese market) is a small market, which can be good to test business models, something that is difficult to do in big markets,” the Google executive stated.

According to a TechWhack article, Portugal could give Google several points of access to Africa. “Most telecom companies in the region are already active in Portugal’s five former African colonies Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe . . . ”

It seems as if the search engine company is dabbling in more than a few “small markets” these days, given Eric Schmidt’s recent participation in the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai. And while a number of people, both loony and sane, have envisioned Google as a world-dominating force (what company wouldn’t like to be number one overall?), some of those theories seem more and more likely.

—
Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl