Gmail, YouTube Going Mobile

Google’s email service and soon its video service will be available on portable devices.

Source: Red Herring

Google introduced a mobile version of its Gmail email system Thursday, a day after the founder of its soon-to-be subsidiary YouTube predicted the user-generated video service would be available on mobile devices within a year.

The Mountain View, California, search king said the mobile client is also five times faster than accessing the email service through a mobile browser. The Java client reduces the number of clicks and keystrokes, and the amount of scrolling, needed to read, compose, and search email messages.

Google’s recent $1.65-billion acquisition, YouTube, also gave indications that it intends to get into the mobile business.

“Within the next year, we hope to have something on a mobile device,” YouTube CEO Chad Hurley said at the OgilvyOne Digital Summit in New York on Wednesday. “It’s going to be a huge market, especially for the video mind-set we’re dealing with. It’s a natural transition.”

As with Google and Gmail, users of some types of wireless mobile devices are already able to view clips from YouTube. But a specialized version of YouTube could make the service more easily accessible to these users and allow videographers on the go to post clips from a camera phone.