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.
