"Global" Google not as Global as the US perception

[GAustralia]

Google is a great company with fantastic technology. In my opinion Google gives the impression within the US that it's products and services are truely global.

I'll argue below where this is not the case using the example of Australia -- a country with particularly strong economic and political ties with the U.S.

1) Adwords reports in Palo Alto time. Palo Alto time has more relevance to the US than to Sydney. Must the world revolve around Palo Alto time? Google, a $100 billion market capitalization technological powerhouse, must easily be able to provide Adword reports in times relevant/selectable by their customers! I say Sydney time is more relevant to Sydney and I should be able to have my Adword click report in timing relevant to when I want.

2) Not doing a great job with the regional results - lots of global offers from sponsors in the "Pages from Australia" results. (See the thread on Dummy Bidders.) Australia is a island/continent nation and a regional search option with greater regional and overall relevancy would be appreciated in the way of expanded market for search and greater market share for Google. Yahoo seems to do better with listing only regional sponsored ads in the regional search.

3) Ignoring the tax laws of Australia. According to the Australian Tax Office if I have any charges on my VISA for $AU50+ I need to be able to show a tax invoice for each of them in the proper format or the expense could be rendered invalid in an audit. I could go online and get Adword invoices but these are not in the proper format. GST must be applied or indicated as $0. The rule is if the benefits of a service are at least 90% in Australia then 10% GST should be applied (let Google figure out how this translates to such a global medium). As a business I can claim GST back as it should only fall on end users. I have asked Google for proper invoices back about a year but nothing has happened.

A point is this: Google has clearly not focused enough on a key regional market and thus breaks a key Marketing 101 rule of tailoring services to target markets.

Some in the US may scratch their heads at why the US trade deficit is labeled as high. Part of it relates to a skewed perspective of the world by US companies even by companies such as Google with the pretense of being globally focused. A famous artist has drawings reflecting geographical perspective. In my opinion, in the case of Google, Palo Alto is in the centre and the world to the West ends where California meets the Pacific Ocean with exception of a dot for Hawaii and maybe one for Japan and another for China. I imagine how this might work to the East: the world appears to end where the US meets the Atlantic with dots for England, Europe and Africa. (Sounds harsh? Google ignores Australian Tax laws - definitive proof of the point).

In Australia this narrow perspective by "global" US companies can be a nuisance. I have worked for several large Australian companies in the past and the Microsoft Office spell checker seems always to get stuck on the US version of English (we spell some words differently out here). Sometimes I have tried to buy over the web to be stopped or slowed by the fact that the when entering an address into a payment form the only states that I can enter are US states - if you can't put a US state in there it will not let you go any further. This nuisaince of perspective impacts non US players as well who are obsessed with the US market in a bid to be global players. In my business we have a nice Toshiba copier (Japanese company). When you set it up on PC's the printer drivers initially default to letter and legal sized paper where the global paper size standard outside of the US is A4.

I have brought a number of issues to this forum. I have a good feeling that Google management read the forum to keep the pulse (especially since SearchEngineWatch is headquarted close to Palo Alto). I probably have a better chance of making my views heard by Google here then sending them to Google's customer service computer (which I have done and have been thanked for doing so from the customer service computer).

Regions outside of the US what say you?

[GAustralia]

As there has not been many replies in this thread I get the impression that the vast majority of people reading this forum are from the US with very little regional representation.

It also appears that the people viewing these threads tend to be more technically orieinted web designers.

Any stats on the demographics of people who read this forum?

[dannysullivan]

Must the world revolve around Palo Alto time?
So that's not Google being US specific. That's Google being West Coast specific. Ask someone on the East Coast of the US what they'd prefer, and you'd probably find them wanting reports based on their time zone just as much as you'd like. It's a good point, and I don't use the system enough to comment more on it, but I suspect it would be easy enough for Google to let you set reports to be in whatever time zone you'd like. Anyone else have comments on this?

Not doing a great job with the regional results - lots of global offers from sponsors in the "Pages from Australia" results.
So I disagree with you that people who want to advertise to those in Australia but who are not based there is somehow Google being anti-global. If anything, it's the opposite. If I have a product I can sell to someone in Australia, that's relevant to them, that I can deliver to them -- what's the issue? But further comments for that are better reserved for the thread you started on the issue over here: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=8405.


As a business I can claim GST back as it should only fall on end users. I have asked Google for proper invoices back about a year but nothing has happened.
I don't know enough about Australian tax rules to figure out if what you say is true or not, but fair to say Google ought to provide its advertisers with everything they need.


A point is this: Google has clearly not focused enough on a key regional market and thus breaks a key Marketing 101 rule of tailoring services to target markets.
And yet you and people around the world seem to be making use of them to advertise and search. I've no doubt they could improve greatly, but I'd hardly class them as a failure, either.

Some in the US may scratch their heads at why the US trade deficit is labeled as high.
Please reserve any political discussion you want to have for another forum. You want to discuss if Google isn't regional enough? That's fine. But going further simply spins a discussion into areas that aren't suited for this forum.

I have worked for several large Australian companies in the past and the Microsoft Office spell checker seems always to get stuck on the US version of English
And here I've been struggling to get it not to be stuck in the UK version, since it seems to have seen the keyboard on my laptop is using the UK layout. I figured it out -- the settings are there.

SearchEngineWatch is headquarted close to Palo Alto
Search Engine Watch is owned by Incisive Media, which is based out of London. I work from near Salisbury, Wiltshire, in the UK. My other editors are based out of the US: Colorado, Virginia and Utah. Where we are headquarted has little to do with what Google reads, of course. Since we are virtual, people come to us from anywhere.

Overall, I understand your frustrations. I'm a US citizen who lives in the UK. I have issues when I want to order products and services from the US but encounter forms that seem to have no clue that there's a country outside the US. But as I said, some of that gets beyond our remit here, which is to focus on the search side of things.