As a follow-up to my blog post about Google India’s upcoming gift, it turns out that Google India Labs has developed an Indic On-Screen Keyboard Gadget for iGoogle and a Google Indic Transliteration. So it turns out that my guess was a bit off. My guess was that Google India would announce their official partnership with the University of Mysore to scan historic documents.

“We’re now offering an easier way to search in 14 Indian and South Asian languages. You don’t need a special keyboard or software; all you need is a web browser, a mouse, and a Unicode font for your language. So whether you speak অসমীয়া (Assamese), বাংলা (Bengali), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), हिंदी (Hindi), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), മലയാളം (Malayalam), मराठी (Marathi), नेपाली (Nepali), ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Oriya), ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (Punjabi), संस्कृतम् (Sanskrit), සිංහල (Sinhala), தமிழ் (Tamil), or తెలుగు (Telugu), we can help you find content on the web in your language,” stated M T Raghunath and Gokul Nath Babu Manoharan, Software Engineers on the Google Blog.

People in India speak over 20 languages and this is really the first time that I’ve seen a search engine begin recognize the needs of addressing the vast number. This is a big step for search engine progression.

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