Google (News - Alert) CEO Eric Schmidt says the next major growth wave for Google, in terms of search engine marketing, is the mobile Internet.

 

Schmidt cited the iPhone as the first mobile device with a good web browser and that more devices will come to market, enabling advertising to become personal, during an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

 

The CEO predicted that within a few years, mobile advertising would generate more revenue than advertising on today’s web.

 

Schmidt said he was “less enthusiastic” about the advertising possibilities of video portals, such as YouTube and DoubleClick (News - Alert), and said he wasn’t happy with the advertising prospects of Web 2.0 in general.

 

Google has invested some $900 million in a deal with MySpace (News - Alert) that saw the search engine as the exclusive advertising and search engine. It reached many users but was proving difficult to establish the ad network.

 

Schmidt saw opportunities in video and graphic advertising. “Some things work, and others just don’t – but the mobile Internet always works,” he said.

 

Schmidt admitted to a great admiration for Android (News - Alert), the platform for mobile devices. “The applications that are now being developed are totally new to me. Things are being developed using GPS and maps that are quite astonishing,” he said.

 

However, admitted Schmidt, it was not yet possible to say how well it will actually work because the programs have not yet been released. Cloud Computing was another trend the Google boss considered “very interesting.” Google would also be going head to head with Microsoft and Yahoo in the management of large computer centers.

 

One issue not touched on during the interview was the assertion that Google is distributing unauthorized copyright-protected content on its YouTube video portal.

 

A year ago, media group Viacom (News - Alert) sued Google for $1 billion. Google claimed in its defense that the “safe harbor” provisions protected YouTube from liability. Viacom’s position, Google said, threatened the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, political and artistic expression.