Google Makes Search Easier in 14 Indian & South Asian Languages

[engine]

Google Labs add on-screen keyboard to aid search in 14 additional langauges.

..in line with our mission of making information universally accessible, we're now offering an easier way to search in 14 Indian and South Asian languages. You don't need a special keyboard or software; all you need is a web browser, a mouse, and a Unicode font for your language. So whether you speak Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, or Telugu, we can help you find content on the web in your language. To get started, add one or more of these iGoogle gadgets to your personalized iGoogle home page. You can use these gadgets to compose queries, and ask Google to search the vast Internet in your very own language.

Google Makes Search Easier in 14 Indian & South Asian Languages [googleblog.blogspot.com]

[labs.google.co.in...]

[weeks]

Google Makes Search Easier in 14 Indian & South Asian Languages

I don't care if it is easier, I'm still going to use English.

[Green_Grass]

Yes.. English is the way to go.

Having said that .. There are millions of people who may start using Google search more aggressively with this new development. Time will tell.

[cfx211]

No urdu. Hopefully they will add that one next for the Pakistani's out there.

[bill]

We've had members here say that these additional languages were not necessary because there wasn't enough web content out there in those languages to justify it. Now that Google has these languages available it could be a good opportunity for web developers who want to corner their niche markets in these languages. I thought that there would be a more open reception to this sort of news.

[McMohan]

It is a proactive action by Google and in one fine stroke has put behind the rivals Yahoo and MSNs Circa BC.

In India about 700 million people don't speak English. Of the "English speaking" population (about 300 million plus), there is a sizable chunk that finds it easier in their native tongue. Google has just opened up a big, a very big opportunity for itself. Now their rivals will start "catching-up action" as usual.

[kartiksh]

Its great tools for Indian Internet users. There are so many popular Hindi blogs already and i specially liked the inclusion of Gujarati language. Yes most of Indian Internet users do prefer English as its easy and single voice for communication worldwide, however Hindi and other Indian languages are more popular for many users in India but not used due to lack of indic script support and standard keyboard for them. However the Hindi transliteration i checked on that URL and i must say it is a great effort. G will have edge in business to its competitor in India for indic languages i.e. MS (MS Office - indic version already used by many government agencies). They all have huge business potential in Govt of India's e-govenance projects which are now in implementation stage in 5 states and already in finalization of vendor at 10 to 12 states. From publicly available information, this projects are worth more than USD 5.37 billion and has to be completed by 2009. Although not everything in this project requires indic languages, but majority of them requires such solutions.

[Habtom]

I don't care if it is easier, I'm still going to use English.

They could add all the languages in the world, but I am sticking to English too ;)

Hab

[bill]

Once they have the search tools localized now they can move on to localizing their desktop tools and Microsoft Office killer applications in those languages as well. It may take some time, but the Google lead in India will soon be significant if they can expand on this.

[yoyoga]

This is a real nice combination of a keyboard entry approach that has existed for a while for indian languages and the fact that Google and Yahoo! can crawl UTF-8 encoded content for quite some time now.

[karamkshetra]

Hey thats a very nice information.

That means Google more Indian.. it seems... coool

[timchuma]

Yes, search results from Indonesia are showing up in Webmaster Tools already.

[alkuma]

Hey, hey, hey,

Indonesia <> India :)

In fact, Austria:Australia::India:Indonesia
Ok, maybe not that far off, but you get the drift.

Getting to the point, a very significant development. There have been javascript based IMEs developed before by independent developers and hobbyists but this is the first time a big player has done this.

The same applies for the websites - there are more weblogs than there are non-weblog-regular kind of sites in Indian languages. It seems like the passengers decided to drive the bus themselves when they saw the driver not being around.

[abacuss]

I hope this will ensure that many Indians biased on their language even the moderately learned people can use them.

[timchuma]

Doh! Yes it is India, I got it confused. Also Hidden Pirate Island (aka Hong Kong) and Malaysia. I have already updated some of the content on my site in line with the results. Unforunately, I have not seen the movie "Journey to Smorf Land", but I wish I had now.

[caran1]

Keyboards and printers in Indian languages are not available, so local language search will not take off soon

[King_Fisher]

Google, the Tower of Babel!...KF

[bill]

Keyboards and printers in Indian languages are not available, so local language search will not take off soon

Not sure about that. You can type all sorts of Asian languages on a standard keyboard. Microsoft has many IMEs (Input Method Editors) [microsoft.com] that allow you to use a standard qwerty keyboard to input a number of languages. They have on-screen software IMEs as well. The keyboard shouldn't be an impediment.

Printers should not be an issue at all. A cheap modern ink-jet printer can print anything. Language won't be an issue for them. You just need the right fonts and language packs on your PC for that to work.