Google Catering To Indian Audience

I always thought that the work in Google Labs was a good indication of things of interest for Google. After all some of the most effective tools like Google Reader have graduated from the labs. So, it is not wrong to say that Google is attending more and more to India when it has started an India-centric Google Labs. Currently there are two language-focused products exclusively for the Indian audience – Indic onscreen keyboard and Indic transliteration. I wonder if we will see this tools integrated with the Google Docs!

Not surprisingly it has also ventured into the local search. Rajiv Dingra has a roundup of the local search market in India. Indian search market is abuzz with search in various aspects – like travel, mobile and deals. With mobiles overshadowing PCs in India, we might see mobile-intensive solutions from Google.

At an equally brisk rate, the map world in India is changing too. MapMyIndia and RouteGuru can be big competition to Google Maps. Of course, Google is taking a more human approach to gather detailed data, but it sure has competition from multiple fronts.

In the end it is good for us here, but it will be really interesting to see how Google proceeds. It might also pave path for others to follow.