Rubber Duck
8th August 2010, 09:59 AM
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Google-Microsoft-focus-on-regional-languages/articleshow/6242139.cms
NEW DELHI: As you enter the Google office in Gurgaon, you are drawn by the overwhelming smell of fresh ground coffee. It’s Thursday, yet employeesGoogle's
are moving around in jeans and tees.
But before skeptics start frowning at such apparent manifestation of Western culture, the 30-something product manager of Google India, Jagjit Chawla, quips: “We are gearing up to benefit for the next big thing—the Indic Web.”
He explains: “Only 7% of the Indian population knows English and only 7% uses the Internet. There is very little content available in the local languages. The next wave of Internet users will be from Indic web.”
So big is the opportunity in the local languages sphere, almost all infotech companies worth their name have jumped the bandwagon. When just a couple of weeks ago, India heralded the new symbol for the rupee, it wasn’t just an emphatic assertion about the Indian economy having arrived on the global stage, it was also seen as a symbol of the coming of age of the Indian language script in a modern avatar.
NEW DELHI: As you enter the Google office in Gurgaon, you are drawn by the overwhelming smell of fresh ground coffee. It’s Thursday, yet employeesGoogle's
are moving around in jeans and tees.
But before skeptics start frowning at such apparent manifestation of Western culture, the 30-something product manager of Google India, Jagjit Chawla, quips: “We are gearing up to benefit for the next big thing—the Indic Web.”
He explains: “Only 7% of the Indian population knows English and only 7% uses the Internet. There is very little content available in the local languages. The next wave of Internet users will be from Indic web.”
So big is the opportunity in the local languages sphere, almost all infotech companies worth their name have jumped the bandwagon. When just a couple of weeks ago, India heralded the new symbol for the rupee, it wasn’t just an emphatic assertion about the Indian economy having arrived on the global stage, it was also seen as a symbol of the coming of age of the Indian language script in a modern avatar.