I love technology. With technology and a little imagination, you can create great technology and a whole lot of

imagination. If you persistently retain those elements in a positive feedback loop, you can actually make things

possible that could only exist previously in imagination. For anyone who knows abit about whats going on in the

technology space right now, this description could nearly pass for a citation for Google. Its no secret that over the past 13 years, those two geek friends from Stanford have created the worlds most potent innovation machine and are doing things previously deemed sci-fi. With 1 million servers behind them, google is a synonym for finding stuff and eureka moments at minimal cost to the end user. Most of what they give you might be free, but often times its priceless.

I’ve been known to romanticize, but in this case Google has kept the geek in me wined, dined and courted, so

forgive my disappointment from the recently held GNigeria summit.

I attended Day 2 of the summit, for Business persons and marketers on Wednesday, 4th May at the Civic Center on the Victoria Island in Lagos. The event organisation was impressive and the overall ambience of the venue resonated quite well with me. The event started about 15 minutes late with the business development manager of Google kicking it off. She soon made way for the vivacious and energetic Bridgette Sexton, Program Manager, Developer and Tech Outreach – Africa who warmed the room up with her excited quips and very amiable personality.

The keynote went okay. The internet insights and trends presentation further heightened my anticipation of the

event. 60% of desktop search from Nigeria is via mobile devices. Key words are ‘go mobile’. Then all of a sudden, for

me the program just flatlined. Okay, stop tape. Rewind back to the beginning and lets try to understand why!

My expectations out of the G-Nigeria conference were probably too high from the beginning. As a thorough

google groupie, I and the good Frenzo follow every change out of the Googleplex on nearly a daily basis. For me,

whether it is gloating over the day’s doodle, marvelling at some newly rolled out product/product improvement

or debating for or against Google’s cause in the midst of their many legal/corporate trysts, I have learned to

view Google as a dear friend. And for a G-Nigeria event, I must have expected some ground brand new insights or

at least a more intellectually rousing line up. I also expected to hear a Google strategy for Nigeria, a lobby to rally

tech stakeholders to address pertinent flaws in the technology ecosystem in the country. Lastly, I must have

expected to listen to presentations targeted at people other than the very least capable of understanding and

assimilating. I must have been expecting the kind of feeling I get when i type a search query in google and I get

returned a first page that has several links to results I knew held the information I sought. And click I did,

presentation after presentation this one, and the results did not improve.

One of the sourest points for me was the Youtube for Business presentation. I tweeted instantly saying ‘Youtube for business is like hot spicy wings for vegetarians’. My shock peaked when it turned out that the presentation was actually Youtube As A Business! Now, fundamentally I’m one of those people who believe that the use of video is yet to come of age in Nigeria. With the debilitating internet conditions, I believe video watchers in Nigeria to still be a niche market. The presentation which was given by Google’s Nigerian Business Analyst ( a position which in all fairness I must disclose that I applied for, out of passion) tried to give business people ideas on how to promote their businesses using

video content on the web that was engaging and fun. But I was simply appalled that the videos used to typify viral

actually had the following viewer stats : Kobe Video –  (170,000 views), N-Reports cartoon –  (19,000 views) and

Ronaldinho (5600 views), Tiger Woods walks on water – (5,700,000). This is against a backdrop of content like the most watched video (that is not a music video) “Charlie Bit My Finger” –  currently with 317 million views and the most watched music video, Justin Bieber’s “Baby” – which currently has over 536 million views. The philosophy of Youtube As A Business was further preached by the creators of the Nollywood Love Youtube channel who were in throes of epiphany over the daily traffic which they were getting. I expected some form of look behind the scenes on what made Nollywood love successful, but yet again my search returned 0 results.

I expected the Google team and the Nollywood Love team to give insights that Nigerian techies could actually use – for instance, the volume of Nigerian traffic to the channel (which I know will be a nominal percentage of total views cos of the internet challenge); the average length of videos watched (drop off rates), etc. These insights would have been key in demonstrating that the Nollywood love model is a business of Nigerians for Nigerians in diaspora and the international community, rather than a business of Nigerians for Nigerians in Nigeria. These insights would have clarified the impressions that most young and vibrant techpreneurs left the GNigeria day two with as to what it takes to create ICT products that can be consumed locally.

I am gonna break off here, but I hope I can complete this post really soon. I would like to conclude it with my impressions of the Q&A session moderated by Nick Heller which ended the event and my take on what I think Google should be doing as a guide for other technology heavyweights trying to make an inroad into the enticing Nigerian market with its 150 million potential cows to be milked.