Tech giant Google launches Indian Language Internet Alliance in India.
The US-based technology giant Google launched the Indian Language Alliance in India yesterday, November 3, 2014. Present at the event was Google India MD Rajan Anandan, Google Vice-President of Search Amit Singhal and Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar. The alliance seeks to offer better content on the internet for users in India who can’t speak English.
The main focus of the program will be to create better content for website in the native language, Hindi. This plan coincides with the Google’s 5 million internet users goal. Currently in India, there are about 200 million English speaking users that are connected to the internet. For that number to rise, Google had to take the step of lowering the bar and catering to the lower end of society, that does not speak English.
Talking about the lack of supply and demand, Javadekar said, “There were just 22,000 Wikipedia entries in the language while 400 million people spoke the language.”
Along with the launch of the ILIA, the giant also announced the first Hindi voice search. An ambitious Javadekar also said that the new technology that is being offered to India can be put to several uses, right from farms to workplaces. The company would also be launching a Hindi keyboard and a few other open source fonts.
