Google seems to be finally focusing on growing Indic language content online: It has partnered with several Indic technology companies and publishers to form Indian Language Internet Alliance (ILIA). Google mentions that this alliance will work together to build Indic content and products for the forthcoming "millions of Indians who will be coming online in the next few years". The focus here is on mobile products and mobile-optimized content for Indic language speakers, given that the users will mostly be mobile due to the terrible state of wireline Internet penetration in India. Alliance Partners: Google's partners in the alliance include publishers like ABP News, NDTV, Network18, OneIndia, Times Internet, DB Digital, Jagran Prakashan, Amar Ujala Publications, Patrika Group and technology companies like NewsHunt, C-DAC, Firstouch, Reverie, HinKhoj, LinguaNext Technologies, Process Nine Technologies, Prost Innovation and Webdunia. As part of the initiative, Google launched a website called Hindiweb.com, which seems to aggregate websites, apps and YouTube channels that offer Hindi content across various topics at a single place, for better discovery. It also demoed Google Voice Search in Hindi and mentioned that it has released 15 different open source Hindi web fonts to its fonts library and hopes to launch 50 more fonts by the end of this year. NDTV also launched a new Hindi Android app as part of this initiative https://twitter.com/vikramchandra/status/529186093959090176 The initiative is sadly however limited to Hindi at the moment, with plans to extend this to other languages in the future. So, here's what I think Google and its alliance partners need to do: -…
