Google’s desi version: Take-off problems?

BANGALORE: Google fans in India were in for a shock when they found themselves staring at the Google homepage full of junk characters. On closer observation they found they were being redirected to Google’s India page. (www.google.co.in) It was another of Google’s hallmark practice of silent launches.

All is not well with the Google India site, which offers search service in four Indian languages - Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.

It seems to be partial to the Microsoft XP users. Users with older versions of Windows were greeted with "junk" characters, even as the XP users were rubbing their hands in glee. The answer lies in the fact that XP supports nine Indian languages including the Hindi font Mangal.ttf also used by Google India site. You can download it here.

Strangely, those users who have the Google Toolbar attached to their browsers are taken straight to the good old "Google English." In the Indian version one has to click through three steps to reach the most loved original search site.

However, the Google India site seems to be a work in progress. The Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Marathi pages are transliterations of the native language in English. Even on Windows XP systems, the transliterated script appears when the fonts are not supported by that particular computer.

A sample of the Tamil Google page.

Is Google trying to widen its base to a population that is not comfortable with English? Unlikely since even in this desi avatar, the search results are entirely in English. Only the user interface changes — what lies beneath remains the same. Will Google be able to pull of a miracle of sorts and be able to "translate" entire search results into several languages?