JIN-528 -- Changing Japan's Hive Mind

[Japan Inc Newsletter]

J at pan Inc Newsletter
The 'JIN' J at pan Inc Newsletter

A regular opinion piece on social, economic and political trends in Japan.
Issue No. 528 Thursday, August 25, 2011, Tokyo


Recently, many business associates here in Tokyo seem to be all atwitter
(pun intended) about Google’s new social network Google+. The excitement is
quite interesting considering that the social networking behemoth known as
Facebook, with over 750 million users worldwide, still hasn’t managed to
crack the code on Japan’s SNS space dominated by the likes of Mixi and GREE.
As many companies have learned, when it comes to Japan, good technology
often isn’t enough to ensure success. What is needed is a truly local
understanding of how Japanese people interact with technology. It will be
interesting to see how our very capable and innovative friends at the Google
office here in Tokyo meet the unique challenges of spearheading a new SNS in
Japan.

Nevertheless, a potentially more important development is slowly unfolding
before our very eyes: Google’s Chromebook. When Google seeded the first
version of the cloud-centric notebook (the Cr-48) with early adopters last
year, most seemed relatively unimpressed. The notion of buying a computer
that is essentially a “thin client” that forces you to rely on a menu of
applications and services only accessible via the Internet seems a bit
foolhardy. And the current consumer pulse (at least in the U.S.) seems to
agree. When the Samsung- and Acer-produced Chromebooks went on sale in May,
there was little of the fanfare and excitement that usually accompanies
something like a new Apple Macbook Air. Further, Google seemed to do little
to promote the commercial launches.

But upon further examination, it appears that the reason Google has done
little to address the concerns regarding individual consumer adoption may be
related to the company’s real target and first major beachhead for the
product: the travel industry. Two high-profile tie-ups featuring the
Chromebook have recently been revealed and they offer the best clues yet as
to what Google is really trying to accomplish with the seemingly
underpowered notebooks.

The first involves one of New York’s hippest guest lodgings, the Ace Hotel.
This fall, every room will come equipped with a Chromebook, lovingly wrapped
in customized felt that guests can actually take with them around the city
using free WiFi or 3G service. Each Chromebook will also come with a
specially designed Google app that offers a detailed guidebook of the city’s
hot spots for dining, shopping and clubbing. The other promotion involves
one of the Chromebook’s pilot program companies, Virgin America. Passengers
on the airline will be able to use Chromebooks free-of-charge, along with a
free WiFi account.

While individual consumers may still be wary of adopting a relatively pricey
cloud computer, and local governments (like the City of Orlando, Florida)
have still only committed to “experimenting” with the notebooks, for the
immediate future, attacking the travel industry makes perfect sense for
Google. Next to raw data culled from Google web searches, the next best
source of information for the search giant will be in-the-field data from
mobile users. Data that will likely be fed into the company’s massive number
crunching-mechanism other location-centric initiatives like Google Places,
Google Offers, and of course Google Maps.

If Google can successfully marry their search engine and cloud ecosystem to
millions of travel terminals located in top hotels and airports around the
globe, the company has the opportunity to create a kind of three-dimensional
consumer behavior grid the likes of which we’ve never seen before. So yes,
the Chromebook may be just a bit more important than we all originally
thought (particularly in light of Google’s recent $12.5 billion Motorola
Mobility deal).

But a major challenge presented here will be getting mainstream users to
adopt such a vastly different computing paradigm. Changing well-worn habits,
even in the age of often transitional digital technologies, can seem like a
radical proposition, even to the most forward-thinking of tech aficionados.

-Adario Strange



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