Understanding the importance of regional languages in India, search giant Google has announced a new program to empower the newspapers to get their online version.
Announced during the fourth edition of ‘Google for India’ event, the Project Navlekha claims to bring offline content online in just a few clicks.
Google’s Shashidhar Thakur, Vice President, Search Engineering, says, “50 per cent more Indians are using mobile search daily. But most of the documents available on the web today are in English and a very few in Indian languages. For search to be truly helpful, it should bring you useful content, in all the languages you understand.”
Google is addressing this issue with the launch of Project Navlekha, which in Sanskrit means “a new way to write”. Project Navlekha does not require any technical know-how of web publishing and can be used by anyone. During the demo, Google engineers were able to publish a regional language article in less than 60 seconds.
The registered publishers on Navlekha will also be provided with free web hosting, along with a branded domain for three years. They’ll also have AdSense support to begin monetising their content.
To be available initially in Hindi language, Google will not charge the publication for the publication tools and the domain name for the first three years.
