Google’s acquisition of Jaiku back in October seems a long time ago now – such is the pace of the technology industry I guess. Subsequent OpenSocial and Android announcements have stolen much of the limelight since, but I keep coming back to the Jaiku purchase. I have a feeling that Jaiku is a bigger piece of Google’s new jigsaw than we’ve so far realised.

If Google simply needed a micro-blogging capability, why go for Jaiku and not Twitter? Twitter after all is the market leader in this growing sector, with an established and enthusiastic user base. Jaiku is certainly popular (especially in Europe) – but not close to Twitter when it comes down to size, popularity and ‘zeitgeist’.

There have been quite a few comments to the effect that Jaiku provided Google with a cheaper alternative to Twitter. Whilst what Google paid for Jaiku is certainly less than they would have paid for Twitter, I’m not convinced this is the reason.

We know Google have money to spend. If the purchase of a pure micro-blogging service was strategically important to Google then I’m pretty sure they would have found the money needed to buy the current leading service. Anyway it probably would have been cheaper still for Google to engineer some kind of status messaging feature directly into Google Talk and/or Gmail if that’s all they were after.

Why Jaiku then? I think the answer lies in mobility, specifically location and mobile integration.

Let’s look at location first. Jaiku is I think unique in combining micro-blogging AND user location awareness. For the uninitiated, when posting status updates Jaiku has the ability to capture and share the location information (neighbourhood, city, country) of the poster in real time. So in addition to a message post Jaiku can provide real time location awareness of users. Hmmm that’s interesting…

And how does Jaiku do this? An integral part of the service is a client application for Symbian S60 platform mobile phones. The client uses location APIs within S60 devices to triangulate the handset (and the users) location based on nearby cellular network towers. The Jaiku client was in fact originally conceived as a ’status aware address book’, and as such integrates into compatible S60 phones to the extent that it also shares the phones (and again the users) status availability ( – General, In Meeting, Outdoor etc).

So in addition to a message post AND location awareness you also have deep mobile integration sufficient to identify the status of a user as well. That makes things really interesting, and its this combination that I think is the clever part. Consider this thought:

Post + Location + Status = Value

If you’re a user of Jaiku, or Twitter for that matter, look back through some of your posts and you’ll see that you’ve built an outline profile of your life. Reading through my Twitter and Jaiku pages it’s reasonable easy to deduce that I’m a Mac geek, a fan of American TV dramas, enjoy listening to Radiohead, suffer from occasional migraines, like Indian food etc etc. Now consider what value is added by a service that knows where you are and also whether it’s appropriate to contact you (through your mobile phone) as you post updates.

Jaiku potentially gives Google the Holy Grail – time relevant, location based targeting of information, personalised to a very high degree. Google + Jaiku is not a million miles away from being able to push appropriate advertising to individuals based on their profile, their location and their availability. Imagine walking down the high street and having your mobile phone pop up with a Google notification telling you that Heroes DVD box sets were 20% off at HMV today, or that a new Indian restaurant had just opened in that part of town. Some may find that scary, and reminiscent of scenes from the film Minority Report, obviously as a technology ‘enthusiast’ I’m thrilled at the possibilities it opens up.

It seems obvious that Jaiku is destined to become an integral part of the the Android platform over the next year. No doubt Google will want the Jaiku engineering teams expertise in building the features outlined above into the Android offering. This is why I think Google went for Jaiku, and this is why I think Jaiku has a big role to play in the next phase of Google’s advertising platform.

If this isn’t what Google has planned for Jaiku, they should certainly think about it.

The internet is predictably buzzing tonight with news of Google’s Android mobile phone platform.Loads of good commentary about, most of it already shared via Robert Scoble in his infamous link blog. I particularly liked Michael Gartenburg’s take on the announcement (’this will prove to be far more disruptive to the mobile industry than if Google had simply announced a handset’). 

I think I agree, although the really smart part is that the Android strategy strategy capitalises on where the mobile phone industry is heading anyway.  In doing so, Google kind of repeat Microsoft’s move back when the Personal Computer market was about to explode all those years ago.

Sure the mobile phone market is already huge, and in some mature markets handset sales growth has slowed recently.  But something interesting is happening at the moment.  The distinction between non-smart and smart phones is disappearing rapidly.  A second phase in the market is emerging as the ubiquitous ‘dumb phone’ takes on smart phone features and evolves.  The mobile phone is becoming the new personal computing platform – the GPS, HSDPA, Email, High Res camera functionality of today’s Nokia N95 and other high end phones will be commonplace in a year’s time.  As these feature sets evolve typical usage of devices is gradually ‘deepening’.  Two years ago mobile internet was for geeks only, now it is reaching the tipping point into mass adoption.

The mobile phone will more and more be the device we use to store our data and interact with pretty much everything we value.  Google has realised this, and is therefore rightly not looking to just capture the geek and enthusiast market as it could have done by launching an uber-connected device of it’s own manufacture today.  Google is aiming for everyday users like my wife, who want a cool looking device that is friendly to use.  Giving the everyday majority of users simple and useful mobile access to Google services is the aim here. It’s far better to let Samsung, Motorola, LG etc to do what they do best (continue to evolve the feature set of devices with mass consumer appeal), whilst Google captures the operating system ecosystem for this new era in personal computing.  Google is almost pulling the same trick as Microsoft did all those years ago – very smart!

Microsoft used to aim for a PC running Windows on every desktop. Google is anticipating a smart phone in every pocket and is aiming to be loaded on to as many devices as possible.  Personal computing will be mobile, and Google wants a big a slice of this.