BANGALORE, INDIA:  With mobile subscriber base crossing 300 mn, Google sees the increased usage of mobile Internet in India as a big opportunity. And its India R&D team in Bengaluru is constantly working on making the user experience better.

According to Vinay Goel, product head, Google India, We are witnessing tremendous growth in accessing rich content in ordinary phones in tier-2 and -3 cities and towns. We took this into account and made YouTube available in Hindi. Google is also eying the introduction of 3G in India, and it aims to provide a rich experience for mobile users in India through some innovations, which is currently underway at its R&D center.

Goel thinks SMS has no future once 3G becomes widespread. He says, Google wants to help accelerate the 3G development in India with its mobile innovations. For example, with the company adding newer capabilities to its Google Talk application, mobile users will be allowed to make phone calls. Some of the innovations introduced earlier this year include mobile voice search and the capability for Orkut users to transfer photographs between mobile phones.

Google also sees affordable data plans for mobile users becoming a reality soon with more and more service providers entering the fray. According to Goel, Googles browser strategy gained its first breakthrough with the open source Gears software which enabled more powerful web applications, by adding new features to browsers.He also feels that over a period of time, mobile browser will be the entry point for many users as the browser based applications would be able to provide seamless transition from desktop (during office hours) to mobile (after office hours). And this is where Googles Android strategy fits in.

Therefore, the company is also banking on the launch of Android based mobile phones which it helped develop. Android is a WebKit based browser which provides improved mobile Internet experience by improving the speed of its mobile search engine.

From AJAX to HTML5

The revolution which started with the introduction of AJAX (around 2005) continues with the progress being made around HTML5. One of the biggest challenges faced by users include the need to install proprietary plug-ins for a rich Internet experience.

HTML5 is the next version of HTML, and in an extension of HTML4 and XHTML1.0. This is a global standard that is being built to provide powerful web applications to users without the need for proprietary plug-ins. This takes web forms 1.0 to the next level in order to provide interactive applications. It is expected that HTML5 will reduce the usage of plug-ins, though Microsoft (Silverlight), Adobe (Flash), and Sun (JavaFax) opines that it will still remain important. Incidentally, Googles YouTube uses Flash technology. And it is only time that will tell whether the situation will remain the same once HTML5 is fully operational. Also, Apple (a strong supporter of HTML5) appears not so impressed with the mobile capabilities of Flash technology. The technology does not support iPhones which results in the lack of poor web experience for its large user base. Goel of Google India says, We want to accelerate and enrich the capabilities of web applications, and this is where HTML5 has a big role to play. Moreover, HTML5 allows video and audio tagging capabilities as well.

Google and other software companies have a big role to play in the future success of HTML5. Its complete functionalities will take about five years to have an impact, when the standards are ratified. Apart from this, some of the key features of HTML5 include canvas, local storage, and web workersall intended to provide users to have an improved experience when working on a browser. Canvas lets the users draw 2D images on a browser while local storage will allow them to work on it even when the Internet connection drops. An example of this is the mail application in iPhone. The user, for example, can check his email on an iPhone even if it is not connected to the Internet. And he/she can use all its features of email including reading, composing, etc.