Google on Monday announced the creation of an Indian Language Internet alliance (ILIA), in partnership with various content providers, to make available local language content on the Internet with an aim to bring 300 million Indians online by 2017.
Content providers include media houses such as ABP News, NDTV and Network 18, government agency C-DAC, and firms like Firstouch, LinguaNext Technologies, among others.
“The ILIA will be critical to make Internet useful to all Indian users and not just English speaking Indians. Through this initiative we hope to enable 300 million Indian language users to become highly engaged Internet users by 2017,” Google India Vice-President and Managing Director Rajan Anandan said.
India has about 200 million Internet users with about 5 million new users being added every month and 100 per cent of these coming through mobile devices. However, only 198 million people in the country are estimated to be proficient in English, with most of them already on the Internet, he said.
The Alliance will work together to accelerate building Indian language content for Indians who will come online for the very first time, mostly via smart phones and mobile devices.
As a part of its efforts, Google showcased demos of voice search in Hindi and launched a website, www.hindiweb.com , to help Hindi-speaking Internet users discover Hindi content across websites, apps, videos and blogs.
“Hindi Voice search is just one of the many steps Google is taking to empower the Indian language users and advertisers to take advantage of the Web’s huge economics ad social potential,” Google Senior Vice President Search Amit Singhal said.
