Google Launches an Initiative to Promote Indian Languages
India has a vast and diverse population. This population exists with multiple languages, customs and cultures, under one roof. In such a country, internet can be a great tool for the development of people from different languages to come and share their ideas. But for this to happen, it is essential that there is a language support system to assist people with the use of this information superhighway. Google has now formed an alliance that will work towards promoting Indian regional languages.
The alliance will work towards providing support to Indian language users to create and receive content in their languages with ease. Google intends to involve over 300 million users from India using the language initiative by 2017.
It is estimated that India will have about 500 million internet users by the end of 2017, up from 200 million users at present. It will surpass the whole internet population of the US. Creating content and accessibility options for regional language speakers will create a healthy future market for the internet giant. India also has a robust smartphone market, and Google can make heavy gains by providing language assistance to the people of India.
The company did a demonstration of its Hindi voice search capabilities on an Android phone. They also launched an aggregation website called hindiweb.com where people can find access to most sites that provide content in Hindi.
This alliance is, in fact, an appreciable initiative from the Silicon Valley giant. It is of course going to benefit Google by bringing in new users for its services, but it will be greatly beneficial to a whole new population of the country that has still not gained access to this essential utility. Google’s alliance will include companies like Times Internet, C-Dac, Reverie Language Technologies, LinguaNext Technologies, and Amar Ujala Publications and some others.
