Later in September, analysts at Gartner then forecasted that Android would become the second largest platform worldwide by the end of the year, a slot currently held by Blackberry maker RIM. They also predicted that Android could reach the number one spot by 2014, ousting Nokia’s Symbian OS, which has held its high rank for years.

Schmidt spoke of other future search possibilities, too, during his time on stage, reiterating remarks he made earlier this month at Berlin’s IFA home electronics event. Specifically, he mentioned the idea that Google could one day function as a “serendipity engine,” an autonomous entity that could search things for you without you even typing a query.

“I’m interested in history, as I’m walking down the street in San Francisco I want my mobile device to tell me about the history here, think of it as a serendipity engine,” said Schmidt.

But for Google, the future of search is more than just mastering mobile, or becoming autonomous – it’s about an overall goal of “augmenting humanity.” Said Schmidt: “What we’re really doing is building an augmented version of humanity, building computers to help humans do the things they don’t do well better.”

He described a future where cars drive themselves, where you’re never lonely, bored or out of ideas. There will always be a friend you can connect to online or some form of entertainment or content on the Internet.

 Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking to the audience at the TechCrunch Disrupt  conference in San Francisco this week, said that his company expects mobile to  dominate search at some point in the future. “Eventually, we think mobile will be the  majority of the searches and the majority of the revenue,” he said. But that future could  take a long time to get here, he added. Schmidt also touched on the future of search in  general, at least as Google sees it, speaking of a time when Google searches become  automatic and autonomous, leading to “serendipitous” discovery of the world around  you.

Google is already seeing a trend towards increased mobile search, said Schmidt, citing the growing number of searches the company has seen coming from Android phones, the sharp rise in handset sales and the rapid adoption of the mobile Web worldwide.

Searches on Android phones – that is, those on devices made by companies like HTC, Motorola and Samsung that run Google’s mobile operating system called Android – have more than tripled in the first half of 2010, Schmidt said. He also noted that more than 200,000 Android devices are sold per day and that in two years, smartphone sales will outpace PC sales.

Another somewhat startling figure Schmidt cited was the growth of the mobile Web in general. Mobile Web adoption is occurring eight times faster than it did on the PC, he said.

These figures shouldn’t be surprising to those following mobile industry trends. After all, only last month reports stated that Android shipments worldwide had increased by nearly 900% in Q2 2010. In the U.S., the largest smartphone market in the world, Android devices represented a 34% market share during that quarter and also became the largest smartphone platform in the country.

This future isn’t just going to be available to the techno-elites, either, said Schmidt, but to the billions of people around the world. “Because of technology, because of Internet access,” he said, “this is a market for one billion now, two billion soon, and in our lifetime five-to-six billion altogether.”

Written by: Sarah Perez

Even at 3G speeds data retrieval on a mobile phone takes significantly longer than we are accustomed to on a desktop PC. It doesn’t take long for users to become frustrated with lengthy sequences of retrievals, and give up. So getting this right is extremely important. In the mobile context it is especially important to structure information as simply as possible. Placing the right information in the right place is an important part of providing a usable experience; getting it wrong means providing a poor experience.

On the other hand, a user presented with a clear goal and intelligent ways to reach it, may tolerate latency issues and the time taken to reach the goal. This is best done by setting user expectations. Every link should use clear labels to communicate to the user what to expect on the resulting page, thereby lowering the risk of click disappointment.

Keep It Simple

The best advice for creating a strong mobile information architecture is to keep it as simple as possible. The following two approaches work well when structuring your IA for mobile presentation:

• Limit choices. Take the content that’s relevant to a mobile user and discard the rest. This results in a simple and focused IA that cuts down the risk of the user getting lost. This approach works well with small, focused sites.
• Create a simple site drill-down architecture, nesting content into well-labeled categories. While this sounds straightforward, it’s necessary to plan carefully before taking this approach. A typical Web site has sub-pages – users follow a link to reach the sub-page. This is drilling down to find the information the user seeks on the Web site.

Drill-Down Recommendations

Here are a few suggestions to keep in mind when considering a drill-down approach for your site:

• Limit categories as much possible: Users become increasingly disoriented as they go deeper into a site. With a Mobile Web site, their tolerance often stops at about five levels – the fewer levels the better You should adjust this number upwards when targeting more capable devices.
• Attempt to limit links to ten per page unless you know that the device can present more information well: You should code your links with accesskeys, so that the user can use the phone keypad to navigate links. We recommend a assigning up to ten accesskeys to any page (0–9) to ensure compatibility with older devices. You should adjust this number upwards when targeting more capable devices that can display this information better.
• Provide at least one content item with each category page i.e. avoid empty links: Giving users at least one sample of the content within a category is a good way to make sure that users get to the right place. Consider placing a link to the featured content with a one or two sentence overview. The shorter, the better.
• Prioritize links by activity or popularity: This is often referred to as “deck placement.” Sorting links in order by frequency of access ensures that the most sought-after content appears first on the list. You improve a user’s chances of getting to the right destination.