Google is also expanding its partnership with BSNL to open more public Wi-Fi hotspots in gram panchayats.
Google Search is currently available in a total of nine Indian languages
In a bid to reach even more users in India, Google on Thursday announced that it is adding support for three additional Indian languages by the end of this year. These languages will join the already available nine Indian languages in Google Search. The company shared this development during the company's Google for India event that also featured a number of other India-specific announcements for the various Google products, including Assistant, Google Pay, Bolo, and Google Lens. Google Station, the company's public Wi-Fi platform, in partnership with BSNL is expanding public Wi-Fi hotspots to more gram panchayats in the country.
Google hasn't shared the names of the three new Indian languages, but these are likely to include Oriya and Urdu as the company is bringing the support for both in Discover later this year. Google Search can currently be used in a total of nine Indian languages - Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, and Punjabi.
The company is bullish on the Indian language support and it isn't limiting the expanded support for Indic languages to just Search. The search giant mentioned that it has added support for seven new Indian languages - Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam - to Discover. Discover is an automated content feed that appears on Google Search mobile apps. Additionally, as we mentioned, Oriya and Urdu support will also be coming to Discover later this year. Further, Google will add Punjabi support as well. The company noted the users will also soon get a language picker in Discover to quickly change their preferred language.
In other search-related developments, the Mountain View, California-based company said that it is rolling out a new look for the mobile search page that will appear to the Indian language users.
“To make it easier for Indian language users to get access to information, we are launching a new modern look that highlights the query more prominently. This makes it easy to navigate to Indian language search results by simply tapping the chip that appears below the search bar,” Google said in a statement.
At Google for India summit, the company also revealed that it is expanding the footprint of Google Station public Wi-Fi to gram panchayats across Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Bihar. Google had originally announced its partnership with BSNL in May this year and had rolled out 2,000 hotspots.
Right now, Google Station public Wi-Fi is available at 4,000 locations, including railway stations that were first to benefit from its tie up with RailTel, in India. Google claims that it is being used by 2 million first time users each month.
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