G

oogle, the world’s largest search engine is launching Google Maps Indonesia with three local partners to deliver more local content for Internet goers.

The venture includes sharing location search technology and information on places and traffic.

“Google Maps Indonesia is very relevant for local users because one in every five searches here has a location title,” head of marketing for Southeast Asia Derek Callow told reporters in Jakarta when launching Google Maps Indonesia on Monday.

He said currently Google Maps Indonesia was working with two local location-based websites, Urbanesia.com and LewatMana.com, and cellular provider Telkomsel.

Urbanesia.com founder Selina Limman said her website would feed around 220,000 local business entities to Google Maps Indonesia.

“That will include company addresses, contact information, user reviews and directions,” she said, adding that she expected an increase in the number of Urbanesia.com users to a million a month from the current 580,000 a month.

Selina also said the cooperation would benefit businesses listed on her website for clicks from Google Maps users.

Urbanesia.com is an online lifestyle directory focusing on the locations of shops, cafes and restaurants in Jakarta, while LewatMana.com focuses on traffic information around Jakarta.

LewatMana.com founder Hendry Soelistyo said under the cooperation, Google would receive traffic condition images fed live through his webcams on Jakarta’s main roads.

“Users can access real situations of traffic points when they click on the ‘Webcam’ menu on Google Maps,” he said, adding that users could also view road incidents such as flooding, blockages and accidents.

Hendry hoped the cooperation with Google could increase the number of his website users by 30 percent from the current 2 million per month.

Telkomsel also expected the cooperation with Google could help the company achieve its 100 million connection target by the year’s end from the current 93 million.

“We are using Google Maps data to enhance our Telkomsel Lacak service [mobile application focusing on location-based services],” Telkomsel deputy vice president for product life-cycle management Ririn Widaryani said.

Google head of product management in Southeast Asia, Andrew McGlinchey, pointed out that Indonesia, with the second biggest number of Facebook users, was a potential for Google.

Callow added that Indonesia was a unique market in terms of the amount of people turning mobile for search purposes.

“So making sure that we can deliver a great experience of Google Maps on the phone as well as the laptop is very important.”

According to recent data published by the International Data Corporation, the total number of Internet users in Indonesia reached 25.4 million of which 15 million were mobile Internet users. (map)