Mobile cards are now also in Russian

At a press conference held in Moscow today, Google presented an updated line of Russian-language services for mobile devices. The next addition to the family was the mobile maps Google Maps, which not so long ago were Russified in their “desktop” appearance.

Konstantin Kuzmin, director of marketing for Google Russia, explaining the company's special attention to mobile services, noted that there are more than 3 billion mobile subscribers in the world. In general, the number of its users exceeds the number of Internet users, so the company is trying to expand access to its services at the expense of owners of PDAs and cell phones.

At the moment, the following products for mobile platforms are available for Russian users:

• search (including iGoogle),
• GMail (via proprietary application or web interface),
• Calendar (via web interface),
• News,
• Cards.

For Google Maps, which have become available in the Russian-language interface, a mobile application has been created that includes most of the “big brother” features - the direction of traffic on the streets, routing (“here - from here”), etc. Those interested can now install it by going to google.com/gmm.

Konstantin Kuzmin noted that the issue of monetization of mobile cards in front of Google is not yet in place: in a number of countries an order of contextual advertising is available, depending on which region and exactly what the user is looking for. In Russia, the Local Business Center is not yet available.
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Google Russia product manager Maxim Azarov said that among mobile services that are not yet available in Russian is Picasa photo organizer. It can be expected that this particular product will be localized next in the line of mobile applications.