New Delhi: Google on Monday launched its Hindi voice search which hopes to connect more people with the internet. Google’s Senior Vice-President Amit Singhal, the man behind Google search, says he wanted to build Hindi search for his mother who isn’t that comfortable in English.
Google launched the Indian Language Internet Alliance (ILIA), a group formed to promote growth of Indic-language content online. Google hopes to enable 300 million Indian language speakers to become highly engaged Internet users by 2017.
Google voice Search lets users enable voice search in five languages, out of more than 50 supported languages and dialect.
“The ILIA will work together to accelerate building Indian language content for hundreds of millions of Indian who will be coming online for the very first time, mostly via smartphones and mobile devices,†said the company. Google is committed to building the Indian language web by making products for Indian language speakers, it said.
Currently there are 200 million internet users in India, and the country’s English-speaking population is already online, the remaining 90% Indians who are not online are not English speakers. The ILIA aims to bring more content in Indian languages. Since these users use Indian language keyboards to search, they can find the content easily.
To support its effort in showcasing Indian language content on the web, Google also launched a website called hindiweb.com that enables users discover Hindi language content. According to the company, the website would enable Hindi speaking Internet users to discover the best Hindi content across websites, apps, videos and blogs, at its event in New Delhi.