John Yunker is founder of Byte Level Research and author of the widely acclaimed book, Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies and editor of Global By Design.
He has covered the emerging field of Web globalization for half a decade and has published a wide range of reports dedicated to best practices in Web localization and internationalization.
About this blog
Going Global focuses on the risks and rewards of expanding into new geographic and cultural markets, from Web globalization to international marketing to global usability.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google has chosen "Egypt as its first outpost in the Arab world because it is the most populous country in the region, with 78 million people and 5.2 million Internet users. Google estimates 50 million people in the region will be online by 2009."
But there is still a lack of content in Arabic on the Internet. Google says that less than 1% of all Internet content is in English.
But I am seeing content growth as far as multinationals are concerned. In our 2006 Web Globalization Report Card, 46 of the 300 companies analyzed offered some degree of Web content in Arabic, roughly 16%. While this is low, it's up from the 10% we found in 2005.
Baidu is the "Google" of China with 51% of the market (according to CNNIC). Awhile back, Google bought a small chunk of the company, before it went public, presumably with the intention of using Baidu as its point of entry into China. Apparently, the powers that be wouldn't let that happen, which led Google to launch Google China (and suffer the wrath of negative publicity from outside of China).
According to AP, Google just sold its share of Baidu putting an end to that dream. Google made money on the deal -- $55 million -- but I'm guessing it would have rather owned 100% Baidu and 0% Google China. But that's all history now and millions of Chinese are brand new to the Internet -- still plenty of time left for Google to out-Google Baidu.
Wikipedia came in second in our 2006 Web Globalization Report Card for a number of reasons. Not only does it offer content in more than 100 languages, it does a good job of managing content expectations.
It does not hide how much content it offers in each language. In fact, it tells you upfront how many articles it offers, such as 168,000+ articles in Swedish and 143,000+ articles in Português.
As shown below, Wikipedia groups all languages by the amount of content supported by each. It's the long tail in action.
How many corporate Web sites are transparent about how much content they offer in each language? Would users benefit from knowing that a site offers 50,000 Web pages in English but only 500 pages in Russian?
Successful Web globalization is all about managing expectations. Users can be very forgiving about sites that aren't fully localized -- but they can be equally dismissive of sites that create the impression that they offer more localized content than they actually do.
A pull-down menu is not the ideal solution for global gateways. For starters, it doesn't scale well. If you offer ten or fewer country Web sites, a pull-down menu might work okay, but anything beyond that and you're asking a number of users to do a bit of scrolling.
The scrolling issue becomes particularly apparent when a menu includes 100+ countries. which is often the case on "select your country" input forms. Sorted alphabetically, countries like the US and UK are going to fall near the bottom of this list. Which is why some organizations bump these countries to the top of the list. This is an unfortunate solution, as it tells the rest of the world that a specific country is more important than the others.
I recently visited a non-profit organization in the UK and had to select my country. Sure enough, the UK was at the top of the list while I had to do a bit of scrolling to find my country.
So what's the alternative? Geolocation is one approach -- in which you guesstimate the user's country -- an approach that is roughly 95% successful. You can also present a pop-up map with countries grouped by region so the user can quickly select his or her country.
If you must use a pull-down menu, just don't play favorites.
According to TechCrunch, MySpace could launch a half-dozen non-English Web sites as early as this summer. Says the blog, "MySpace co-founder and chief executive Chris DeWolfe was quoted by the Financial Times yesterday and said that the first localized, non-English versions of MySpace will be available this summer. The company has designated 11 countries to target, naming specifically only France, German, China and India."
Here's the current MySpace global gateway:
It will be interesting to see how MySpace's gateway evolves to handle the additional sites.
I always have wondered what Europeans would call US football if and when it became popular over there. Apparently, I'm not alone and ESPN has a solution to that pesky soccer/football naming issue. You can view the ad here
For Elle, the challenge is complex because there is no one "Middle East" market when it comes to fashion and cultural dress codes. Says the article, "Clothing customs vary widely throughout the region. In some countries like Lebanon, many of the clothes shown in Elle might be worn on the street. In others, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, they'd be reserved for private gatherings of women. Accessories, from designer shoes to handbags, scarves, sunglasses and jewelry, are permitted almost everywhere."
McDonald's got started in China in 1990 and plans to have 1,000 locations open by the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Roughly half of all future locations will have drive-thrus. But because this is still a new concept in China, McDonald's is treading carefully. For its first drive-thru, it had a human taking orders rather than that garbled box we Americans have barked into for years. The larger issue is that the Chinese look at restaurants as gathering places and not pass-thru places, at least not yet. Says the article...
McDonald's has spent much of its time in China learning to slow down from its fast-paced U.S. roots. The company's new restaurants have Internet connections, play areas for children and special seating for their mothers, all of which are designed to reinforce their role as gathering places. "We eat McDonald's when the kids want to," says Luo Wenwei, a housewife from the prosperous southern town of Dongguan, who drives a Volkswagen.
Robert Levin, CEO of Transclick, alerted me to an app they have developed that plugs into Skype and translates text messages in real time. So you can message across languages.
The app is in beta currently (isn't everything these days) and you can download it here: http://share.skype.com/directory/transkype/view/.
It looks like it's going to be a paid app, so try it out now while it's free.
Although I love Skype, I'm not much of a text messeger; so please let me know how it works...
Just when I thought the dark days of US xenophobia couldn't get any darker, I read that Utah has taken down its Spanish-language Web site.
According to the article, ""Two weeks ago, the state launched www.espanol.utah. gov, a Spanish-language companion to the state's informational Web site The Spanish-language site offered 10 pages of information on taxes, health services, driver licences, and work-force services selected from the state's 400-page Web site. But within days, callers complained to the governor's office that the site violated Utah's law making English the state's official language. The Spanish-language site was quickly taken down until its content can be reviewed, said Mower."
As US companies add Spanish content to their Web sites at a furious pace (Southwest Airlines, Home Depot, Lowe's), our federal, state, and local governments are going in reverse (or leaning in that direction). In a period of time when Americans should be learning second and third languages, we're having debates on "protecting" English. How long will it be before WhiteHouse.gov takes down its Spanish content?
Google News has added Arabic to its portfolio of 35 localized sites. This site takes a language-specific approach to the news rather than country-specific approach.
It's getting a little crowded at the bottom of each News page...
I'm off to Chicago shortly to attend/speak at the Internet Retailer Conference. This is a sizable event -- I'm told there are more than 2,100 participants (I think it has officially sold out). And Web globalization in the retail sector is a hot topic this year; a number of sessions are devoted to the topic.
I've also just published a handy guide on Web globalization for retailers. You can read more here.
If you're going to be at the conference, please let me know!
According to Silicon India Google CE Eric Schmidt says India will become the world's biggest Internet market in 5 to 10 years. Says the article, "Schmidt's other futurist view is that Hindi, not Hispanic, could become one of the world's three Internet languages, in conjunction with English and Chinese."
Given that Hindi was represented on just a handful of the 300 global Web sites we reviewed for the 2006 Web Globalization Report Card, that's a pretty bold statement. Statistically, it makes sense. But the Global 1000 have yet to embrace Hindi on the Web in a big way.
Chinese (Simplified) is a different story. It is now the ranked 5th on our list of most-popular languages, up from 7th last year.
Here are the top five (after English):
1. German
2. French
3. Japanese
4. Spanish
5. Chinese
John Yunker is founder of 
