Google’s lead APAC product manager on picking one’s battles in Asia

Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil,” but it may as well be “What, me worry?” While the bulk of the world’s tech startups and tech giants all have to worry about things like user retention, competition, and market share, Google’s core products – YouTube, Android, and Search – are already so ubiquitous that getting people on the internet is enough to ensure that the company stays afloat. Luckily for Google, more and more people around the world will have easier access to the internet thanks to the surge of affordable smartphones hitting the market. Since many of these smartphone owners will be using their devices as their primary means of going online, it’s in Google’s best interest to make sure it can influence their habits and place its properties front-and-center.

In an effort to learn more about how Google’s product and engineering teams in Asia balance their loyalty to Mountain View with the needs of diverse emerging economies, Tech in Asia sat down with Andrew McGlinchey, product manager for Google in Southeast Asia, to discuss the power of platforms, getting app developers paid, and why Inbox is overrated. Below is an edited transcript of our interview.

TiA: How would you describe your day-to-day role as product manager for Southeast Asia at Google?

McGlinchey: Traditional product managers at Google have a product and that’s their thing – for example, a spam-fighting tool for YouTube. I’m a regional product manager, so that means that I look across many different products and figure out what’s missing, and then illustrate – sometimes lobby – to get the right things launched at the right time. Sometimes you corral the local resources to get them to launch well.

A good example is direct carrier billing. There’s a business development team and a standard tool set for implementing this, but sometimes there’s a special tax system or currency regulation in a given country – things that the original product team may have never thought of team when they were building the system. So we have to chase and prioritize to make sure the system accommodates these cases, so we can launch our products in the next place.

You discussed in your keynote how Google is working to improve “internet accessibility” in APAC. What is Google gaining from all of its efforts to increase internet accesibility in Asia?

Google is weird. It’s a nice thing that we don’t feel like we have to explain to shareholders where the internet users in Cambodia are. We figure that if the internet is healthy, then Google is healthy. We’ve seen this in other parts of the world, like Western Europe, which were once new frontiers and are now robust, thriving internet communities.

How might the implications of ‘What’s good for the internet is good for Google’ be different now than it was ten years ago?

It’s different now than ten years ago because people are joining the internet in an era where Facebook is the first thing you do when you go on the internet, and your mobile phone is the tool you use to access the internet. The internet used to mean websites. Now it means apps and mobile services. Android is a super accessible platform, and the more accessible we make that, the more people benefit. The Google Play store and YouTube are two other examples of powerful platforms. There are great examples of local creators telling their stories and selling their businesses on YouTube.

As someone whose job involves batting for Asia, what are some recurring themes as you communicate with your colleagues in Mountain View?

The basic format for Google product rollouts is you launch in the biggest markets first and then prioritize down the line. But sometimes it gets complicated because you’ll say “It’s this size now, but look at the future.” A couple years ago, that was my job – I’d say, for example, “Look at Indonesia’s potential.” Now I say, “Look at how big Indonesia is.”

In general, first you launch in the US, then it’s easy to launch in Australia and the UK, and then you stick it in France and Germany and it all works. Then when you get to India, you think “Oh wait… we didn’t think about this the right way.” But we’re starting to get better at this now. Three years ago, were I to be a bit uncharitable, we might have said “Wow, networks are really bad in India, how do I ruin my product to get it to work in India?” Now it’s like, “This is what the reality is – people don’t have credit cards, and people use inexpensive mobile phones, so we can’t anticipate tons of computing power. Internet connections are slow and unreliable, and customers are price sensitive towards them. Let’s build for that.” More and more, we’re building from the ground up rather than retrofitting existing stuff. Asia is leading that in many ways, but it also matters for Brazil, Mexico, and a lot of other different places.