Google India has launched a Tamil language channel for Google News, writes BG Mahesh, CEO of Greynium (OneIndia) on his blog. This comes just a couple of months after Google had launched Hindi Translation, and prior to this, Google has also released Google News in Hindi.
Some of the sites that Google News (Tamil) is aggregating content from: Webdunia, Yahoo India (Tamil), OneIndia, Dailythanti, Maalaisudar, Dinamalar, Sify, Andhimazhai and New India News.
But then how does one discover the sites? There’s a clue in what Google is doing for increasing usage for Hindi News – by allowing those from India, who are accessing news in English, to also view the same content in Hindi.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Tamil is next. However, this kind of a service will only work for bilingual users, and won’t really work for those who don’t understand any English.
It’s important for content providers, technology players, device manufacturers to come together to solve the many infrastructural issues related to local language content – from font issues (switching to unicode), keyboards/keypads (inadequate marketing and distribution) to inadequate softwares. More on that soon.
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8 Comments until now.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Tamil is next. However, this kind of a service will only work for bilingual users, and won’t really work for those who don’t understand any English.”
Not sure how this follows. There are plenty of users who use Google in native languages, and the experiences are quite customized to their needs. Windows Vista is available in Hindi, as is MS Office. The bottleneck is the keyboard, but there are alternatives out there, for those who really want them. It is a fallacy that all access points to computing and digital technology is in English, but it is very true that the alternatives are not exactly predominant or conspicuous.
Nikhil,
From what I know Webdunia provides Indian Language content for Yahoo!
Atleast Malayalam Yahoo is from Weblokam(Webdunia Malayalam)
Is there a duplication of source this ways?
-Nikhil
Sumant – How will a user who doesn’t understand ANY English access http://news.google.com ? Or http://www.webdunia.com or http://www.oneindia.in ?
Nikhil – comparing characters, doesn’t appear to be. Correct me if I’m wrong (anyone), but these content deals are for a limited number of stories per month, and not for all the content.
Sumant – since you do understand the language, do tell if there is duplication.
Nikhil,
Regarding
“How will a user who doesn’t understand ANY English access http://news.google.com http://www.webdunia.com ”
If these companies have their Hindi IDN.com then, all one needs to type on the adress bar is
Hindi Name followed by CTL+ENTR
CTL+ENTR adds www. prefix and .com suffix automatically. It’s a registry setting in windows.
In theory, the following will wor. But not sure about the practical use.
Example: you could enter हिन्दी on the browser address bar and then hit CTL+ENTR .
Most browser will resolve to http://www.हिन्दी.com
Nikhil,
I can’t read Tamil and so even I did a character comparison.
What I was telling is that the source is the same webdunia.
-Nikhil
hi Nikhil Pahwa,
I thought your comment meant – the link “In Hindi” on news.google.co.in is meant for bi-lingual users. Yes, only those who can read English would go to news.google.co.in and he would click on “Hindi Mei” only if he could read Hindi, hence he/she is bi-lingual.
A good percentage of folks could be bi-lingual but slowly it will change. I think majority of mobile users today are not bi-lingual. Recently I met a building construction person who had saved the names in Hindi in his mobile. Acquiring and accessing a mobile is cheaper than PC+internet but there will be a sizable user base of language users on the internet. For that internet penetration has to increase, yes it has been slow but not dead. So let us not loose heart.
We get a good percentage of feedback mails in language and not in English. This was not the case even 2 years ago.
regards,
BG Mahesh
I haven’t seen any duplication in aggregation, but my scans are anecdotal at best. Also, I’m told by Google that they do filter out duplicates created by their indexing aggregators. I assume there will be some percentage of leakage, though.
However, a number of publications reprint press releases and notifications from PR sources, and that duplication is inevitable.