Google has taken on new initiatives in India by launching the Indian Language Internet Alliance (ILIA) which is a group that aims to promote native languages online. To do so, it has partnered with various content providers in the country including popular names such as ABP News, NDTV, Network 18, Oneindia and Times Internet Limited.
The Economic Times is reporting that Google India MD, Rajan Anandan, made ILIA official in the country and also disclosed that the company hopes to reach a total of 500 million internet users by the year 2017. The first project by the alliance is a website called Hindiweb.com which is basically dedicated to content in the national language.
The main goal for the domain is to provide content from multiple sources including the aforementioned partners in order to make it easier for the Hindi-speaking population to access curated content like blog posts, news, video and more in native text. Clearly, Google wants to bring more regional languages to the internet and not force English onto users.
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Additionally, it says that it has improved voice search in Hindi, making it faster than before and also more accurate. Its Hindi keyboard was been tweaked as well for quicker input. The search giant has revealed that it has added a total of 15 new Hindi fonts that will work across different platforms and are open source, which means everyone will have access to them.
It’s estimated that only 16% of the total population in India has managed to get online and the number is quickly growing by the years. The Hindiweb.com website is the first initiative by ILIA and Google has promised to bring more features based on other native languages in the coming months.