Google promotes Indian languages to bring 300 mn users online

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Google has formed the Indian Language Internet Alliance(ILIA), a consortium of 18 Internet industry partners, to make local language content available on the Internet. The aim is to to enable 300 million Indian language users to become highly engaged Internet users by 2017.

Internet users in India have started to come online rapidly on their smartphones and they are using Indian language keyboards to access and type content in their languages. The alliance will work together to provide an inclusive platform for the non-English speaking users to break language-barriers and access online information easily via smartphones and other mobile devices.

The new initiative will also expedite the creation of online content in several Indian languages. As a part of the efforts, a website, www.hindiweb.com was also launched by the information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar which will provide curated content in Hindi.