By IANS
Bangalore : Google Inc, the world’s largest search engine, Monday announced the launching of a local search tool to enable Indian users find information on local businesses like restaurants, shops and hotels on the web.
The India-specific search product – http://local.google.co.in – has also a facility to access information on local businesses. The Google local business centre will enable any business entity to load its information on the web. Local users can access the business information freely by logging into the search tool.
In a major initiative to step up its India operations, the company said here it had created Google India labs as an online platform for products under development and would seek feedback to improve them.
Launched under the sub domain – www.labs.google.co.in – this makes India one of the few countries to have a country-focused labs programme. Globally, Google has seven labs across the US, China, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.
“The local search and local business centre will provide users with better results by increasing the corpus and depth of business listings. The two India-specific products will benefit local businesses by ensuring visibility on the Internet for free,” Google India product head Vinay Goel said in a statement.
The India labs will serve as a platform to showcase innovations relevant to the local market and allow users to take a peek into Google’s future offerings. The products will emerge from Google’s global research centres, including its R&D centre in Bangalore and cater to the needs of local users.
The India labs will also showcase the Indic on-screen keyboard iGoogle gadget with the ability to type search queries in 14 Indic languages. The gadget will enable users to type in Indic languages by choosing letters from an on-screen keyboard using a mouse. Users will be able to add the gadget of their chosen language to their personalised iGoogle home page and use it to search for content in their language.
Similarly, the Google Indic transliteration tool allows the user to type in Hindi using phonetically equivalent English text entered through an English keyboard. The Hindi transliteration was launched on the Blogger service early this year.
The product offering will enable users to create Hindi content and use it in applications of their choice such as mails, documents and so on.
“Our vision for the 60th year of independence is to empower Indian users by providing organised accessible information and products. The India labs is one such effort to enable users to test and provide feedback on products that are relevant to them,” Google India R&D head Prasad Ram said.
Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google is a top web property in major global markets. Its advertising programme provides businesses with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users.