Last June, Google introduced a number of SMS-based services specifically designed to suit the mobile needs of Africans, kicking off in the Republic of Uganda. Today, the search giant is complementing one of the cellphone services it had launched in the country, an SMS-based marketplace dubbed Google Trader, with a web-based version of its own.
Essentially, Google Trader is an online marketplace like we’ve seen a thousand of before; a place people can visit to search for, buy and sell all sorts of goods and services. When the new product was debuted in Uganda last Summer, users could only send SMS messages with certain commands (e.g. REGISTER or BUY) from their mobile phones to trade on the platform. Still available only in English and still completely free, Ugandans can now visit the custom Google Trader marketplace on the web to search for and trade products and services like crops, cars, electronics or jobs straight from their computers.
With the Web version, users get a bit more functionality, such as the ability to search for multiple items at once and to include photos and more detailed information about the products or services they’re selling.
Like the blog post announcing the new browser-based version of Google Trader says, the service is meant to provide African people with greater access to new markets and trade opportunities. Hopefully, we’ll see these and other SMS services being introduced on a significant scale in other countries soon as well.
Do the telcos in Uganda “offer” unlimited texting like their US counterparts?
This is such a small piece of news. Would probably go unnoticed to most of the American public. But SMS is still the interface for millions upon millions out there in Asia and Africa. Very interesting to see how google executes on SMS because SMS services in these regions are ripe for disruption. They’re mainly spammy and not well thought of.
great points, in a short few lines.
^I’m not sure but SMS is used a lot more in African countries than it is in North America/Europe.
It’s very creative and interesting.
I don’t know why Google would want to introduce it in NA – it makes sense in Uganda but really doesn’t make sense here. It’d be like another Orkut – available but not adopted.
I don’t think Google wants to introduce it there (US). idea behind is that most people in Africa have simple voice and text only phones… phones with rich multimedia & web functionality are not as common though starting to gain traction with 3G services being introduced in Zim, Kenya, SA etc…
Nop they don’t – Telcos charge for each txt send Out.
Great idea and an interesting approach. However speaking from my experience in Ethiopia, people don’t know English well enough and cellphone coverage is still too poor, to make a service like this a real success (Don’t know about Uganda though). In Africa there’s always a whole bunch of problems to tackle, when introducing something like that. Nevertheless I believe Google is on the right track here …
How do people pay?
It’s free. normal carrier fee for the SMS but Google’s not charging.
Not quite. They do charge normal SMS rates + a bit.
To see how successful google trader is, just browse the categories:
http://www.goog...cat=agriculture
4 ads for agriculture yesterday, one of them being a toyota carina
The most popular category seems to be land. 1M is about 500USD, so most items offered here are not for your typical poor rural Ugandan.
The most impressive thing google did was give the local webscene a big blow. In the local scene lots of people see this as a direct attack on for example http://buykati.com/ They didnt make it to techcrunch when they launched.
I’d be interested to know the user stats for Google’s SMS services in the African continent. Whilst they may well be free, SMS is a significant chunk of disposable income of mobile subscribers in low income countries like Uganda. Is the move to the web an admission that adoption rates have not been as successful as hoped?
Interesting. Doesn’t really effect me though