Making a deal with Google

We want to approach Google with a proposal that could be of interest to them. Your job is to do the market research, create an interim proposal, and present this proposal to the local Google chief. A second phase involves doing additional market research, refining the proposal, and presenting to a Google decision-maker in the US. The proposal consists of creating digital addressing systems for third world countries lacking formal addressing, which is the majority of cities. The lack of formal addressing shows presents problems for location-based advertising, credit card fraud prevention, you name it. The benefits to Google are in the capture of local advertising in these cities, which can be considerable. We have started an effort in Nicaragua (see [login to view URL]) but lack the resources to market the idea and to take advantage of the resulting business opportunities. We have created a feasibility study we did for the city of Granada, Nicaragua, to implement an addressing system. This document is in Spanish, but I can translate for you if you have an interest. It went nowhere for lack of funding. Our motivation is that having an addressing system opens up many opportunities for our company, primarily in mobile apps related to geographic locations. We will need to quantify the opportunity for Google, with the hope that if big enough they would fund the initiatives, at least the design of the coding system, which would then allow advertisers to locate their business given a digital address. As a first approximation the size of the opportunity is some fraction of the present Yellow Pages business, which is still a healthy business in Latin America, given that the Internet has not yet steam-rolled over them as they have in the US. ## Deliverables I may be getting ahead of myself, but if they fund the coding we could use the money to update the street network by driving the streets and locating points of reference, as well as coding the streets and address ranges. We would then turn around and give this data to Google. They in turn update their map database and make available to anyone, but since we would have a head start on some of the mobile apps we would be the first to benefit. Once the funding for coding is in committed we could visit with the city officials to see if they would be interested in adapting the system. Their backing would be nice to have, but not required; the business benefits would still exist even if the coding system we create is not officially approved. Before we approach Google we would need to know a couple of things: 1) Number of cities in Latin America and your home country, over say 250,000 that lack a formal addressing system and for which a Yellow Pages book is available? 2) An approximate gross income for the Yellow Pages book. The research could be done over the Internet, I believe, but I would rely on your judgment. Your task would be to do the research and create the proposal for Google. Before we start, however, it would be best to see if Google would be interested in pursuing the idea. We need to formulate a preliminary proposal and present to your country Google representative. If it goes well we continue with Google, otherwise we try with Microsoft and/or Nokia. You do not need to be a programmer to tackle this job, but you must have a deep interest in the subject as well as to be self-directed in the sense that you will need to figure out how to get there from here. On a technical level you must understand what a Street Addressing System is, how it is designed, and what uses it has. In a nutshell a SAS assigns an address (building number, street name, zone) to every building and empty lot in a city or metropolitan area. Cities that do not have a formal addressing system