Alastair Otter 18 February 2008 at 12h00
The words most often said at Monday morning's Google South Africa briefing in Johannesburg were: "We can't comment on that. It's not useful to discuss it."
Obviously Google is playing its cards close to its chest but for a company that makes money from sharing others people's information it is remarkably coy with its own details.
Even Google SA country manager Stafford Masie was on a tight leash. Known for going out on a limb and declaring all manner of top secret plans, Masie waited patiently throughout the presentation for Google's global engineering vice president Douglas Merrill to give him the go-ahead to divulge even the most mundane of information.
Obviously Google likes to set the agenda on what it does and doesn't share but sadly this time around it had nothing to offer apart from a few platitudes.
What we still don't know about Google in South Africa includes whether the company has any serious plans to build infrastructure in SA, how many people are employed by Google locally, whether Google will roll out Adsense for mobile searches locally, or even a hint of what the next big thing from Google might be.
What we do know about Google from Monday morning's event is that "Google loves Africa" - the second most popular statement of the morning - and that mobile is a big focus for Google in Africa. On the first it's not really surprising, everyone knows Africa is the next big market for most businesses. And on mobile being the next bing thing? You don't need a team of researchers to come up with that breakthrough insight.
Oh, and we also know that Google SA has employees with titles like sales manager and industry manager which means you're likely to get a call sometime soon from someone trying to sell you online advertising.
