Google searches for India match

Google, the world’s largest player in the Internet ‘search’ space, is looking to enhance user experience in India by coming out with improvements in its search engine through advanced algorithms.

The company is working to finetune user experience based on feedback from Indian users and the experience of other players in the field of Internet search.

“We are spending additional time to finetune the search experience and develop an index for India-specific search topics. Apart from the improvements to the search algorithm, we are also closely watching what other people in the search space are doing to enhance user experience here,” Prasad Ram, Head of Google’s India R&D centre, said.

Ram noted that most India-specific products which the company has launched in the recent past are based on feedback from Indian users.

“We believe that the Web is for everybody and not to be confined to people who are able to read and write in specific languages. We have taken the Web to the common people by launching new solutions such as Indic Transliteration and soft keyboards. The feedback we get for most of the products we launched in the recent past has been amazing,” he said.

Google India recently test-launched a service called SMS Channels, which will help users create their own channels (groups) and send the content through SMSes for free.

“SMS Channels is free for both content publishers and mobile phone users who subscribe to text updates via SMS.

The service is currently available to users with Indian mobile phone numbers,” Ram says.

Google is also working closely with the open source community, as part of which it offers Google infrastructure to run applications developed by Web developers. The popularity of the applications developed by the open source community will be an important parameter in monetising their products in the future, said Ram.

“Whatever we borrow from the open source community, we give it back. We understand the need for an ecosystem to develop any product; open source applications play a very important role in our product roadmap,” he said.

Google recently organised its first ever Developers’ Day in India attended by over 400 developers.