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It is that time of the year when we reflect back on the current year and make resolutions for the next. This reflection can be based on anything, e.g., individuals, city or country. We took some time to reflect on how the year 2009 was for "Connected India". This year, we have put additional focus on users connected through their mobile phones, i.e., users who use internet from their phones. This focus was particularly important given that our mobile search traffic this year grew 4 times compared to last two years put together. For this analysis, we mined billions of anonymous search queries that we got from Indian users to get glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times.

We have put together various interesting lists for you here. People turned to internet to know more about everything that was happening around. Indian general elections, the two budgets, global recession and the Satyam scam - everything was hot on internet. On the tech side, Twitter's growth has been astounding and the launch of Window 7 was much talked about. ISRO impressed the world with Bhuvan, a product that allows user to discover and explore earth in 3D mode with specific emphasis on the Indian region.

While there are lot of interesting insights but what surprised us is the relation between desktop and mobile traffic. Mobile internet has higher usage early mornings and late evenings whereas desktop has higher traffic during the day . We call this counter cyclical nature of desktop and mobile. This shows that users have inherent desire to search and consume information throughout the day and mobiles phones are coming in very handy when users are away from their desktops. Cleaning up your emails in the morning, keeping in touch with your orkut friends, watching You Tube videos and entertaining yourself with Bollywood content; it's all now part of the day of mobile phone users.

If you are curious to analyze trends in an area of your interest then try Google Trends . This tool allows you to compare traffic volume for multiple search queries on a relative scale (e.g. cricket, football ) along with what is rising faster. The tool also allows you to compare traffic trends among websites as well through feature called "trends for websites" or view a specific vertical through Google Insights.

Last but not the least, all of the search queries we studied were anonymous — no personal information was used. Have fun analyzing the India 2009 Zeitgeist.

Posted by Alok Goel - Product Manager, Jignashu Parikh - Software Engineer

Most of us use a keyboard to enter text; it's one of the most basic activities we perform on a computer. However even this simple activity can be cumbersome in many parts of the world. If you've ever tried to type in a non-Roman script using a Roman keyboard, you know that it can be difficult to do. Many of us at Google's Bangalore office experienced this problem firsthand. Roman keyboards are the norm in India, making it difficult to type in Indian languages. We decided to tackle this problem by making it very easy to type phonetically using Roman characters and we launched this service as Google Transliteration.Read More

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Most of us use a keyboard to enter text; it's one of the most basic activities we perform on a computer. However even this simple activity can be cumbersome in many parts of the world. If you've ever tried to type in a non-Roman script using a Roman keyboard, you know that it can be difficult to do. Many of us at Google's Bangalore office experienced this problem firsthand. Roman keyboards are the norm in India, making it difficult to type in Indian languages. We decided to tackle this problem by making it very easy to type phonetically using Roman characters and we launched this service as Google Transliteration.

Using Google Transliteration you can convert Roman characters to their phonetic equivalent in your language. Note that this is not the same as translation — it's the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other. For example, typing "hamesha" transliterates into Hindi as: , typing "salaam" transliterates into Persian as: and typing "spasibo" transliterates into Russian as . Since our initial launch for a single Indian language, we've been hard at work on improving quality, adding more languages and new features.

Today we are pleased to introduce a new and improved version of Google Transliteration, available in Google Labs or at http://www.google.com/transliterate.

In this new version, you can select from one of seventeen supported languages: Arabic, Bengali, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi,Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. You can also compose richly formatted text and look up word definitions with our dictionary integration. If the default transliteration is not the word you wanted, you can highlight it to see a list of alternatives. For even finer-grained control, we provide a unicode character picker to allow character-by-character composition.

Google Transliteration is integrated into several Google properties and we have an API and bookmarklets to extend this capability to other websites. A solution we initially built to solve a problem we saw here in India is now being used in many other parts of the world as well - one small example of the scale and leverage that technology can bring in today's increasingly globalized environment. As with all labs products, we will continue to improve the technology and try out new features. We would love to hear from you, so do let us know what you think.


Posted by Nilesh Tathawadekar and Mohammed Aslam, Software Engineers

Over the last 10 months, the Google Internet Bus has traveled to 60 towns across 4 states, giving many people their first-ever experience of the Internet. The overwhelming response we receive from the people of each state continues to inspire and encourage our efforts to engage with local communities and build local advocacy for this powerful medium.

We are now in 'God's Own Country'. Over 20 days we'll focus on four themes – education, information, communication and entertainment.

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Over the last 10 months, the Google Internet Bus has traveled to 60 towns across 4 states, giving many people their first-ever experience of the Internet. The overwhelming response we receive from the people of each state continues to inspire and encourage our efforts to engage with local communities and build local advocacy for this powerful medium.

We are now in 'God's Own Country'. Over 20 days we'll focus on four themes – education, information, communication and entertainment.

The bus will use interactive content in two languages - English and Malayalam - to highlight how people can use the Internet in their daily lives. What's more, our Google Map maker team will also be joining us to help people map their own cities in Kerala.

Users across India can follow the bus through its journey, see pictures & videos, and join online communities by simply visiting http://www.google.co.in/internetbus.

Posted By: Nishant Nair & Srikanth Belwadi

Ask for directions in India, and you'll notice most people tend to prefer landmarks over road names. These could be as simple as the "coffee shop past the third traffic signal" or a "petrol pump just past the Gateway of India".Read More

Ask for directions in India, and you'll notice most people tend to prefer landmarks over road names. These could be as simple as the "coffee shop past the third traffic signal" or a "petrol pump just past the Gateway of India".

We launched driving directions for India in April this year. Today we are taking this a step further with the launch of landmarks in driving directions.

This effort was possible thanks to the large amount of landmark data that users like you contributed through Google Map Maker. Our new algorithm determines from available signals, which of these landmarks are most useful for navigation, based on importance and closeness to the turns that you're making. We now combine landmark data, counted turns ("the 2nd right"), intersection names, and road names, and try to use whatever information is most relevant and useful for the direction you're heading in.

On the desktop, we're using landmarks in two ways - to identify where users need to turn, and to provide confirmation that they're on the right track. We have also included navigational landmarks on your mobile phone with Google Maps for Mobile.

We encourage you to help us improve the landmark data by sharing your local knowledge on Google Map Maker as we strive to build the best navigation mechanism for users in India.

Just to give you an idea of what's new, the following screenshot helps you compare the before and after results for directions from IIM Bangalore to Bangalore City Railway Station

Happy way-finding!

Posted by Sree Unnikrishnan, Sr. User Experience Designer and Manik Gupta, Product Manager, on behalf of a cross-functional and global Geo team

We are happy to announce the launch of a great new way for orkut users to share interesting web content with their friends - The 'Share on orkut' bookmarklet for browsers

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We are happy to announce the launch of a great new way for orkut users to share interesting web content with their friends - The 'Share on orkut' bookmarklet for browsers




You can install the bookmarklet from here for all browsers

When you find something interesting on the web, just click the bookmarklet and share the content with your orkut friends. Your friends will get the link and your comments in their updates. You'll also have an option to promote and recommend the content to your friends.

Web publishers and bloggers can also post orkut share buttons on their pages using a simple JavaScript library.

More details about orkut share API and sample code can be found on orkut developer site.

So spread the word, have fun sharing!

Posted by Rajiv Mathews, Jayesh Sharma

We've received a lot of requests to develop our search by voice feature for these phones. We're happy to announce a new version of Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 that includes the search by voice feature for queries spoken in English.Read More

We've received a lot of requests to develop our search by voice feature for these phones. We're happy to announce a new version of Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 that includes the search by voice feature for queries spoken in English.

Downloading the Google Mobile App places a shortcut to Google search on your Nokia phone's home screen. It's now fast and easy to search for anything on the Internet. Holding down the call button activates voice search so you can speak your query. Search by voice is not limited to simple queries. Try complex queries like -- "pictures of gateway of India", "what is the length of a cricket pitch", or even something very Indian like "makki ki roti and sarson ka saag recipe".

You can also type queries quickly thanks to Google Suggest, which provides search suggestions for common queries. You can search for anything — from "kebab corner" to "coffee shop".
Whether you're in Bangalore or Gurgaon, you can turn on the My Location feature to give you the most relevant results nearby.

Check out the video to see search by voice and other cool features in action.

If you've got a Nokia S60 phone and want to download the new version of Google Mobile App, visit m.google.co.in from your phone's browser.

Posted by Karthik B, Software Engineer


* All trademarks belong to their original owners.

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We're always keen to share updates about our browser Google Chrome. This past month, we launched a new stable release with speed improvements and updates to key features, as well as a little something extra to make your browser pop: themes. Today, we're excited to build on this initial splash of color. We invited leading artists, architects, musicians, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion and interior designers from around the globe to create artwork for an unusual canvas: the modern web browser.

The result? Artist Themes for Google Chrome, a fusion of art and technology, with a hundred Artist Themes that we hope will enrich and personalize your web browsing experience.

We're honored to have had the opportunity to work with artists including Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Karim Rashid, Jonathan Adler, Oscar de la Renta, Anita Kunz, Tom Sachs, Kate Spade, Donna Karan, Kid Robot, Casey Reas, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Graves, Todd Oldham, Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Mariah Carey (and that's just to name a few!). For a taste of India, we have Bollywood themes based on much-loved blockbusters and new releases. We would like to extend our thanks to all the artists for lending their vision, imagination and hard work to this collaboration.

For a behind-the-scenes look at one illustrator's unique creative process, check out the Google Chrome Blog. And for a preview of these themes, here's a video flipbook we've compiled to showcase some of the artistry behind this project:

If you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, download the latest version and give the Artist Themes a whirl.

Posted by Saurabh Chandra, Product Marketing Manager

Diversity at Google means having a workforce that reflects the diversity of our customers' perspectives, ideas and cultures - one that thinks and acts inclusively, and fundamentally values people's similarities and differences.Read More

Diversity at Google means having a workforce that reflects the diversity of our customers' perspectives, ideas and cultures - one that thinks and acts inclusively, and fundamentally values people's similarities and differences.

As part of our ongoing commitment to encourage excellence in computing and technology, we instituted the Google India Women in Engineering Award in 2008, with the objective of recognizing and rewarding deserving women students in the field of Computer Science and Engineering.

With two successful editions behind us, we are pleased to announce the Google India Women in Engineering Award, 2010. This year we will be accepting applications from September 15, 2009 to October 31, 2009. The award is open to any woman student of Computer Science in an under-graduate, post-graduate or doctoral program that meets the application criteria.

Aspirants to the award will be assessed on their academic excellence, passion for Computer Science and demonstrated leadership.

Winners will be announced in 2010 and will take home a sum of INR 1,00,000 each. The winners will also be invited to join a conclave at the Google India engineering office, comprising a technical discussion with Google engineers, workshops, break out sessions, panel discussions and the award ceremony.

See highlights from previous years here.

Posted by Jayashri Ramamurti, Human Resources Manager, India

As the #1 social networking site^* in India, orkut helps over 17 million people stay connected - whether it’s uploading photos, videos or simply leaving a message. orkut is home to hundreds and thousands of communities and applications. Users talk about food, sports, travel, gadgets, movies, art, automobiles, schools.. almost everything.Read More

As the #1 social networking site^* in India, orkut helps over 17 million people stay connected - whether it’s uploading photos, videos or simply leaving a message. orkut is home to hundreds and thousands of communities and applications. Users talk about food, sports, travel, gadgets, movies, art, automobiles, schools.. almost everything.

orkut now offers an opportunity for marketeers to use the power of this social medium to engage with their audience. All kinds of businesses, from large brands to a local small enterprise, can now drive awareness and engagement for their products and services on orkut using Google Adwords.

1. Orkut allows advertisers to reach the largest online audience^* in India

Over 17 million active users. That’s more than 45% of the Indian online population

Over 6 billion pageviews in India each month

Average user visits the site 10 times each month, spending 12 minutes per visit

2. Orkut allows advertisers to focus on the users they care most about

With the highly-specific targeting options that orkut allows advertisers, they can now choose to show their ads to groups or individuals based on their age, gender, interests, geography and keywords

3. Orkut allows advertisers to get high visibility for their budget and goals

Ads appear on prominent positions on users' homepages, community pages and search results within orkut.

With only one ad position per page, the ad is guaranteed high visibility and increased user recall.

Advertisers can choose to pay on a ‘per click’ basis or on a ‘per impression’ basis depending on their campaign goals

4. Orkut allows advertisers to be creative

Advertisers can use an ad format that best suits their promotion.

Orkut supports text, static images, animated images and flash ads. We would continue to add more formats for advertisers to make the ads interesting and useful for orkut users

5. Orkut allows advertisers to tap into the power of AdWords

Google AdWords brings performance and measurement to marketing campaigns on orkut.

Advertisers get the best value for their marketing spends in an auction-based model. They can start, pause and modify campaigns at any time. They can also track performance with real-time reporting and gain insights about user's reactions.

Ad campaigns for orkut can be setup on Google AdWords by selecting social networks and online communities in the placement tool

6. Orkut allows advertisers to create custom solutions for brand building

For advertisers who require very high visibility and for those are sensitive to campaign time slots, orkut offers a 'custom branding' solution. With this option, advertisers can run targeted display ads in orkut communities and on users' homepages.

The custom solution allows advertisers to purchase and reserve ad impressions in advance. They can also block an entire day’s traffic for their ads to increase the impact of their brand campaign.

For personalized support to build the best brand campaign, advertisers can contact the Google sales team by mailing orkut-india-sales@google.com

* source: comScore, Media Metrix, July 2009

Posted by: Srikanth Belwadi, Kushagra Shrivastava & Savio Barretto

We’re announcing a new way to run local ads in the new AdWords interface – location extensions. Location extensions allow you to "extend" your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching relevant business addresses to your ads.

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[x] http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6296508887730508910&postID=4849604779877188888

We’re announcing a new way to run local ads in the new AdWords interface – location extensions. Location extensions allow you to "extend" your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching relevant business addresses to your ads.

If you're a primary business owner, you can set up extensions by linking an AdWords campaign to your Local Business Center (LBC) account. If you're not the primary business owner of the locations you're advertising, you can manually enter addresses directly into AdWords. For example, a clothing brand that distributes to a number of different stores might want to associate their ads with various store locations through extensions, even though their official business address doesn't correspond to those addresses.

Once extensions are set up, Google will dynamically match your locations to the user's location or search terms and show relevant addresses with your text ads. If we're unable to determine a user's location or if there are no relevant addresses to show, we'll simply show your ad without an address. If you don't want to dynamically match addresses to your ads and prefer to choose one particular address to show with one particular ad, you can do so by setting up specific location extensions for individual ads. Your ads can show on Google and Google maps with their relevant extensions and as regular text ads on search and content partner sites.

Location extensions will be rolled out over the course of a few weeks, so this feature will be available to some advertisers starting today and will become visible to everyone in the coming weeks. To learn more about location extensions, read the location extensions overview section of the Help Center.

Posted by Kushagra Shrivastava, Product Specialist

Bored while traveling? Taking a break from work? Looking for an insight into current trends? A few of us got together at Google and designed something just for you. Try Read More

Bored while traveling? Taking a break from work? Looking for an insight into current trends? A few of us got together at Google and designed something just for you. Try Popular Searches on Google from your mobile.


This feature looks at millions of queries (in an anonymized and aggregated manner) that we get every hour from Indian users and finds out what's on top of users' minds right now. We recompute every hour. We also show snippets of information (images, news, blogs or videos) to tell you "why" something is so interesting and popular right now.

For instance, I found out that Somdev Devvarman, is a budding tennis superstar from India, who recently beat the sixth seed, Marin Cilic in straight sets. Didn't know that before!

So, go find something your friends aren't aware of yet and become 'Popular' as you search.



Posted by: Dhruvkaran Mehta and Suhas Phand ,Software Engineers, India Mobile Search.

We firmly believe that users deserve a great online experience regardless of the language they speak. This belief is what inspired us to build our transliteration service to provide an easy and intuitive way to type in languages for which keyboard support was not available or not widely used. We are happy to announce the launch of transliteration support for Read More

We firmly believe that users deserve a great online experience regardless of the language they speak. This belief is what inspired us to build our transliteration service to provide an easy and intuitive way to type in languages for which keyboard support was not available or not widely used. We are happy to announce the launch of transliteration support for Urdu and Punjabi. Transliteration allows users to type words phonetically using their english keyboard. For example, in Urdu, you can type "shukriya" to get شکریہ and in Punjabi, you can type "duniya"to get ਦੁਨਿਯਾ . If a word did not get transliterated correctly, hit the backspace key or select the word to see list of alternatives to select from. Typing Control + G allows you to switch between english and local language typing.

Launching Urdu and Punjabi has been a true labour of love for our team. Urdu brought with it some unique challenges: since it is written right to left, we needed to ensure that editing functions such as backspace, tab, etc all work as expected. Urdu diacriticals, or 'Aerabs', also needed special attention as they map the vowel sounds but are not necessarily visible in the word. For Punjabi, the 'addak', 'tippi' and 'bindi' posed its own challenge as they change the intonation of the previous character. We hope that Urdu and Punjabi speakers in India, Pakistan and elsewhere in the world find this tool useful to type in their native language.

With this launch our transliteration service now supports twelve languages, including: Hindi,Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Gujarati,Marathi, Nepali and Arabic

As always, we would love to hear from you; let us know what you think.


Posted by Sridatta Chegu and Anupama Dutta, Software Engineers

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Google India is continuing it's efforts to increase awareness about benefits of the Internet in India. Google Internet Bus is an initiative to reach out to people with limited knowledge and exposure to Internet. After an overwhelming response from people in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, we are excited to announce the arrival of the bus in Andhra Pradesh. The bus will visit educational institutes and public places in 16 towns of Andhra Pradesh in the next 48 days. The campaign will focus on four themes – education, information, communication and entertainment. Interactive content - in English and Telugu - will be used to highlight benefits of Internet in people's daily lives.

The Internet bus has traveled across 35 towns so far, reaching thousands of first-time Internet users in each town. The interest we have seen has surpassed our expectations. It has been very exciting to see people from different walks of life, visit the bus and learn about what Internet could do for them. The Bus has helped introduce the Internet to many people, such as a group of farmers in Karnataka, who explored the Internet for agro-development, and a local artist, who learned how tools like Picasa can be used to showcase his work to a global audience.

Mobile based products have been a big hit. In Andhra Pradesh, we will lay special emphasis on this medium and showcase how people can access Internet even on low cost data plans and handsets. We will also engage cyber café owners with an aim to build local advocacy for this powerful medium.

Users across India can follow the bus through its journey, see pictures & videos,

and join online communities by simply visiting http://www.google.co.in/internetbus.

They can also subscribe to receive SMS alerts in Telugu and English with useful

tips on the Internet.

Posted by Srikanth Belwadi and Nishant Nair