Though I have argued elsewhere that geo-linguistic analysis matters to understand the inter-linking dynamics of the World-wide Web, it is often overlooked by skeptics who believe that the World-Wide Web will be eventually dominated either by English and Chinese language. The recent news events that Google plans its very first Asian data centers in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, and Baidu just got Beijing’s approval to test the overseas market in Thai-speaking and Arabic-speaking worlds, should provide further evidence that geo-linguistic factors matter, even for US-based Google and China-based Baidu. Geo-linguistic factors matter for us not only to understand the dynamics of Internet, but also shift the dynamics of Internet.
Do you think that Google’s choice of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore is just an arbitrary one? Is it just co-incident that these cities just happen to host many Chinese-speaking Internet users? When Google “migrated” from mainland China to Hong Kong China, I suggested/predicted in an op-ed piece published in a Taiwanese newspaper that Google should establish other centers in other East Asian cities, such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Taipei, so as to demonstrate the move to leave Beijing is not a defeat, but rather a beginning of “long march”. I specifically use the historical term of “long march” as a kind of ironic but strong metaphor to make the case that Google should continue to serve other Chinese-speaking population and non Chinese-speaking population in East Asia. While not discounting the size of Internet users in China, it is still very important to see East Asia youth and cosmopolitan crowd as highly interconnected peoples in the region.
Similar evidence could be found in Europe. Google’s EU Headquarter in Dublin has openings in positions in localization, including “Localization Product Team Lead”. Have a look at the job description and highlight the business processes and professionals that this “Localization Product Team Lead” involves, both inside and outside Google, you can get a sense that localization matters for everyday business of Internet companies. Localization, or L10n, originally just refers to a set of computer codes and configuration texts that provide a localized interface for software and websites. Now, localization means much more. With the wide-adoption of language- and geography-based technologies, localization now captures markets, and also the possibilities of hearts and minds of the people via familiar language and location-based sensibility. If Internet companies do it right, they can be heavily rewarded and a geo-linguistic-demographic segment of Internet users is within its corporate reach. If they do it wrong, they will face backlash such as these angry comments on Google’s language detection software.
It is about the time for researchers to theorize on the topic of “Internet users”, or specifically “information-searchers”. Borrowing Ien Ang’s concepts on TV viewers such as “audience-as-public” and “audience-as-market”, I argue that Internet users can also be conceptualized as “searchers-as-public” and “searchers-as-market”.
In the globalized TV industry, the “audience-as-market” is first zoned by multi-nationals as “geo-linguistic regions”, then for each geographically-bounded smaller regions (after all TV distribution channels are not as universal as the World-wide Web), audience is segmented into demographics where the channels and programming of the TV products are organized and measured according to the very demographics. Advertising money and expertise can thus operate in the knowledge system of managing the “audience-as-market”.
In the globalized Internet industry, the “searcher-as-market” is also partitioned into “geo-linguistic profiles”, such as zh-TW for traditional Chinese used in Taiwan, en-UK for English used in UK, etc. Unlike the globalized TV industry where broadcasting or cable TV is still geography-bounded, these “geo-linguistic profiles” are configurable and malleable. The outcome of the content that shows on your laptops or computers is not as pre-determined as the content that comes up on your TV screens. If your laptops or computers are configured with a specific “geo-linguistic profile” and the website or online service you try to use also provide the specific service that is tailored for that profile, you are not limited by geographic constraints. This is why I can manage to use Taiwanese, Hong Kong and mainland Chinese versions of Google search engines even though I am not in Taiwan, Hong Kong or mainland China.
The power of digital and networked technologies does not stop there. In addition to overcoming some geographic constraints, the basis of search-engine-related industries, i.e. search keywords and links around keywords, provide much more flexible calculating device to segment searchers than the “people-meter” used in TV industry. Instead of relying only on elusive and sometimes intangible guesswork of quantitative-sociology-based demographics, the Internet industry can use keywords to measure and analyze searchers. In effect, keywords are the equivalent “channels” of distribution mechanism. Think about the role of hashtags in twitters and other microblogs. Think about Google Adword. Think about Microsoft AdCenter. They all use the power of keywords to reach a certain geo-linguistic-demographic of people, narrowing down even more effectively with specific keywords that circulate among certain users who have the right geo-linguistic profile and right search words. Here we witness the birth of the “searchers-as-public” and “searchers-as-market”. This is probably the underlying structure that revolutions can (or cannot) snowball, and this is indeed the underlying dominant structure where the Internet advertising money is gathered and distributed. Try the tools provided by Google Adword and Microsoft AdCenter, and you will realise that each keyword (or a set of keywords) in different geo-linguistic profile (or geo-linguistic virtual region) has already a price tag on it for bidder.
We need more theories and empirical work on the knowledge of and production of, the “searchers-as-public” and “searchers-as-market”.