Google, a Giant in Mobile Search, Seeks New Ways to Make It Pay

Today, Google says mobile searches are growing as quickly as Web searches were at the same stage in the company’s early days, and they are up sixfold in the last two years. Google has a market share of 97 percent for mobile searches, according to StatCounter, which tracks Web use.

Now that it dominates the field, Google is throwing its burly computing power and heaps of data at new problems specific to mobile phones — like translating phone calls on the fly and recognizing photos of things like plants and items of clothing. “I feel like a parent the second time around feels,” said Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who works on search. “You saw your first child grow at an amazing pace, and here we are with our second child, mobile, growing at the same pace and showing the same signs.” Google has been slow to seize some newer Web business opportunities, most notably social networking. Investors have criticized the company for dragging its feet when it comes to figuring out how to make money in new fields. But mobile is an exception. Last year, Eric Schmidt, then the company’s chief executive, said Google’s philosophy was “mobile first,” meaning it would build products for phones at the same time as versions for PCs.

“This is the place that Google is essentially betting its future on,” said Karim Temsamani, Google’s head of mobile advertising, a role created in September. Still, Google has not consistently followed the mobile-first mantra, and some analysts, including Colin W. Gillis of BGC Partners, say it has not moved quickly enough to create new mobile products or ads.