Google Transliteration IME to support 14 Indic languages

The search engine giant Google on Thursday released a desktop Transliteration IME, an Input Method Editor which aids users to type in 14 Indic languages using Roman keyboard accessible in online or offline mode. The service was previously available by the name Google Indic Transliteration as an online service.

Users can type words phonetically using Latin characters and the Google Transliteration IME would convert the word to its native script.

The Google Transliteration IME was developed at Indian R&D center in Bangalore which is available in 14 languages like Arabic, Bengali, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

For the time being, the IME engine is compatible with Windows 7/Vista/XP and can be downloaded for free. The tool also has features like personalized choices, word completion, quick search, easy-to-use keyboard and various other neccessary required options.

The IME enables businesses, students and teachers to author content and share views in their local languages and also helps users to use the feature with Gmail, Orkut, Blogger and Knol.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Bing to oust Google as default iPhone search?

Apple and Microsoft may be in talks to expel Google as the iPhone’s default search engine, in favor of Bing, according to BusinessWeek. The Apple-Google battle for the mobile throne is getting heated.

This is all coming from “two people familiar with the matter,” so, you know, eat a bowl of salt or whatever, but it sort of makes sense in a Machiavellian kind of way. Windows Mobile 7 notwithstanding, Apple’s competition in the mobile arena isn’t Microsoft, but Google, and so it’s not really that outlandish, especially considering that Bing isn’t necessarily a worse search engine than Google. Apple avoids throwing unnecessary support to Google (although the iPhone will still feature Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail) while Microsoft gains a huge market for Bing. Everybody wins, except Google, which only mostly wins.

If Bing were the default search engine on your phone, would you go through the necessary steps to change it to Google? I have a feeling a lot of people just might not care. (Via BusinessWeek).

Popularity: 9% [?]

What’s Islam? Don’t Ask Google

Google’s search engine returns common results to most queries as you type. But the “don’t be evil” company appears to be censoring its results when it comes to Islam.

Type “Christianity is” into Google and you’ll get a list of common searches. But the engine appears to suppress results for “Islam is.”

Type a few words into the search field on Google’s home page and the engine automatically returns a helpful list of popular, similar searches for the words you’ve typed in so far — a convenient way to find the right information.

Enter “Christianity is” and you’ll find results that, while offensive, at least indicate common discussions on the Internet. Likewise, type “Judaism is” and Google suggests other, potentially offensive searches such as “Judaism is false” and “Judaism is not a race.”

But type “Islam is” into the search engine and Google’s auto-results pane mysteriously vanishes, leading some to conclude that Google, whose mantra is “don’t be evil,” is censoring its search results.

According to Google’s Web site, the query suggestions that appear as you type are drawn from from searches you’ve done (if you’re logged in), searches done by users all over the world, sites in the search index and ads in Google’s network.

The company also explains that “We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms. If you encounter a term that should not be suggested, please let us know by posting in the Google Web Search Help Forum.”

Perhaps the returned results are so inappropriate that all results have simply been turned off, an option some Internet users label ‘cowardly.‘ After all, search for hot-button items such as “scientology is” or “Muhammad is” and the results are even more offensive.

A Google spokesman explained that the weird absence of results is just a software problem: “This is in fact a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can.” But the company would not respond to requests for clarification.

An intriguing corollary: Google offers search suggestions for future tense queries as well. Ask “Christianity will” and Google suggests “Christianity will end, it will disappear,” and “Christianity will end.” Ask the same about Islam and Google notes that “Islam will dominate the world” and “Islam will destroy Europe.”

Popularity: 8% [?]

Google adds translation to main search engine

Google has began weaving an automated language translation feature into its universal search service.

A new “translated search” tool lets people direct Google to seek results from Web pages written in an array of languages and then deliver results in a searcher’s preferred tongue.

The feature has been available at the Google Translate service, but is becoming part of the California-based Internet firm’s popular main search engine.

“Now, when you search on Google for something in your own language, you can use this tool to search the web in another language,” Google technical lead Maureen Heymans and product manager Jeff Chin said in a blog post.

“We’re integrating it fully into Google search, making it easier for you to find and read results from pages across the web, even if they weren’t written in a language you speak.”

The tool can be found in a menu revealed by clicking on “Show Options” at the top of a Google search results page.

Search keywords are translated into languages that appear relevant, such as French and Dutch for a query about Belgium, and Web pages found are presented in the searcher’s language.

“We’ll algorithmically select the best language(s) to translate your search query into and then return you translated results from those pages,” Heymans and Chin said. “We’ll even display results from multiple languages.”

Searchers can look for Web pages written in any of 51 languages. The tool will display results from as many as five languages at a time, according to Google.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Google adds date and time specific searches

Google has added new tools to its ’show options’ link which nestles at the top of the search results page.

Nine new options range from date and time specific searches, to filters for shopping web sites.

“Today we’re announcing nine new Search Options tools: past hour, specific date range, more shopping sites, fewer shopping sites, visited pages, not yet visited, books, blogs and news,” explained Google product manager Nundu Janakiram in a blog post.

“These features have been rolling out gradually and will be available globally in English by the end of the day. You can try them yourself by searching Google and clicking ‘Show options’ in the blue bar just under the logo.”

Google added search results from forum and discussion posts earlier this week, and has now added the option to search within its Books, Blogs, and News pages. This will make the business of performing research quicker, easier and more accurate, the firm said.

The new time and date options let users search for the most recent posts, or any results found within a specific date range, both of which Google claims will be useful for people working on research projects.

The ‘visited pages’ feature can filter out results from a user’s visited sites, while adding the option to search only for sites that have not been visited before, giving users the chance to find some previously missed, but relevant pages. The feature requires a Google Account and the web history option enabled.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Facebook’s Plan To Trounce Orkut In India May Be Working

With the growing market of internet users in the country, India has become a battlefield for social networks. Google-owned Orkut has long been the most popular social network in India, with Facebook fighting to catch up. But Facebook has been upping the ante over the past few months, and according to August’s ComScore numbers, the plan may be working. In August, Orkut’s unique visitors in India dipped by 800,000 within a month, from 16 million visitors in July to 15.2 million visitors in August. On the other hand, Facebook grew its unique visitors in India by 700,000, from 7.5 million visitors in July to 8.2 million visitors in August.

This the largest drop in unique visitors Orkut has seen in India over the past year, while Facebook has been steadily growing each month. In fact, Facebook’s audience in India is up 228 percent from a year ago, compared to a 35 percent annual gain for Orkut.

There are a couple of key factors that could be attributed to Orkut’s recent drop in visitors. First, in India, Facebook has been pushing out an aggressive campaign on its social network to get users to import their friends from Orkut with a special Orkut import tool. It basically lets them find friends on other social networks, like Orkut, who are also on Facebook and makes it easy to send a friend requests to those contacts. The purpose of the tool is to make it easy for users to quickly find new friends and establish their social presence on Facebook. The social network offers this in the U.S. for Gmail, AIM and other contact platforms. But this new tool in India is for Orkut specifically. Facebook users are also seeing is the Orkut contact importer in Brazil, Orkut’s home base and stronghold where Facebook is clawing for market share.

Another reason for Facebook’s growth in India could be the recent launch of Facebook Lite. India was one of the original target markets for the lightweight version of the social network, since it is particularly useful in developing countries where high speed Internet connections are sparse or non-existent.

Facebook has been eying India’s huge market and steadily adding features that help the social network establish its reach in the growing country. For example, Facebook launched availability for several Indian languages including Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam, in May of this year.

It’s plainly obvious that Facebook is growing fast in India and could quite possibly overtake Orkut in the next few months. Meanwhile, other social networks are dropping like flies in the race; with Yahoo shutting down SpotM and MySpace considering layoffs in India because of the its lack of traction among users.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Google turns 11 with an eye on Microsoft

Eleven years ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. with a search engine and a plan. Now their company has grown into an online behemoth battling head-to-head with industry giant Microsoft Corp. while the term Google is a verb that means Internet search.

Obviously, a lot has changed for the company and its founders since Sept. 27, 1998.

Google celebrated its anniversary this year quietly, doing little more than changing the famed doodle on its search page from the usual Google to Goog11e .

But whether it celebrates its birthday or not, Google is one of the great Internet success stories to date. The company not only owns the search market with a share of more than 64%, it has branched out over the years with its hosted Google Apps applications like Gmail along with Google Maps , Google Earth and other products.

More recently, Google has moved to take on Microsoft and its widely-used Internet Explorer in the browser business, and even disclosed plans this summer to develop an alternative to the Windows operating system. Just yesterday, Google announced plans to release an early version of its Google Wave collaboration tool to 100,000 users and developers for testing.

“I would say Google is the most influential Web company out there,” said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research Inc. “It’s rare to have a company grow like that, but we’ve seen others. It’s just that the others either flamed out, were acquired or haven’t yet reached a sustainable state. Look at Netscape, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook.”

Caroline Dangson, an analyst with IDC, noted that in a survey undertaken by the research firm last year, Google was easily the top consumer brand.

“We have found that with consumer surveys, [Google] is the number one consumer brand,” she added. “We conducted a survey including Yahoo, MSN, eBay, Amazon … different consumer Web properties. Google was number one for all of our questions, from ‘How much do you like the brand?’ to ‘How much do you use the brand?’ to ‘How much do you trust the brand?’ There are few companies that are able to grow and dominate in this way.”

Google has grown to the point where it’s become a threat to Microsoft , which has had a long and storied history of high-tech industry dominance. There was a time not so long ago when few believed that any company could rattle Microsoft, let alone a Web company like Google .

But Google’s vice-like grip on the lucrative search market forced Microsoft to spend massive amounts of money to overhaul its old and unexciting Live Search engine to create Bing , which was unveiled this summer. Microsoft went a step further by signing an agreement that calls for Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. to use Bing as the primary search engine on its various sites.

At the same time, Google was developing its Chrome browser to take on IE, and was looking to develop an operating system to compete with Windows.

The Chrome browser , unveiled about a year ago, hasn’t hurt Microsoft yet, but the company isn’t giving up. Last week, for example, Google released a plug-in called Chrome Frame that lets users embed the Chrome browser into IE. The plug in, which is said to boost IE’s browser’s notoriously slow JavaScript speed, drew a quick response from Microsoft , which warned that it could cause security problems for users.

Google in July announced plans to take on Windows with an open-source operating system, also called Chrome, that could run Internet-centric computers like netbooks as early as the second half of next year. Many other companies have tried and failed to take on Microsoft in the operating systems business, but analysts say that Google has the financial muscle, the engineering might and the industry clout to actually put up a realistic fight for market share.

Google also moved this summer to make its hosted applications suite more attractive to large government users by announcing plans to tailor its cloud computing services for various federal agencies.

“In Microsoft’s mind, Google is probably the biggest threat to their bread-and-butter operating system and desktop application businesses,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “Google’s dominance of the search business is also Microsoft’s biggest opportunity in terms of new revenue and revenue growth. So to a large extent, the two companies are going to do battle on several fronts, which is good for consumers as it keeps innovation high and prices low, and it’s also fun to observe.”

Google, with a focus on its core business along with an ingrained innovative track, is also influencing a whole lot of up-and-coming Web 2.0 businesses, according to Olds.

“The Google model of developing a killer application, optimizing it to provide high user value and gain user loyalty, and then monetizing it has been the model of choice for social networking companies. Take a look at Twitter,” he said. “Google has gone from zero to industry giant in a record amount of time, starting with just a bunch of guys with a search engine to a company with a $156 billion capitalization in just over a decade. It’s a company worth emulating.”

Popularity: 10% [?]

Google Launches Mobile Help Forum

Solve your mobile phone related queries. Got a mobile phone query? Now Google will help you solve it. A brand new platform has been initiated in the form of — Google Mobile Help Forum.

The new forum will address all your mobile phone related questions and you can also help others find the answers to queries.

Some of the new features in the forum are :

- Q&A format to help you find answers quickly
- Improved search and integration with the Google Mobile Help Center
- Better spam detection and prevention
- Public recognition of Top Contributors and frequent posters (with more posting privileges as you make your way up)
- Ability to subscribe to ask questions and receive answers via email

So head to the Google forum or subscribe to the RSS feeds and find answers to your queries.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Microsoft’s Bing Lands into Worlds Top 20 Websites

How long does it take to introduce a news website service and bring it into the coveted “World Most Visited” popular websites list? That is not a problem if it’s a website is a Search Engine. Not only that, more importantly, if the search engine is from the world renowned Microsoft. Well actually, it is not yet the most visited popular website till now. But, to break into the top 20 search engines was almost a cakewalk for Bing. From its launch date, Bing has managed to achieve this feat in just two months.

So, its official now, ladies and gentlemen, Microsoft’s Bing, which was launched in sontime June, has now officially made its entry into Alexa’s top 20 List. It is still way behind the likes of Facebook, Twitter, etc. However still, Alexa’s top 20 list shows the Bing’s erstwhile Avatar, Windows Live Search at the number five spot. Windows Live has been dead and gone for all practical purposes. Going to live.com, you are now redirected to Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine.

However, even if Bing has managed to enter into the top 20 list. It is still way apart from reaching Google status currently. “Google” continue to held its number one position in Search Engines. “Yahoo” is placed at the second spot follwed very closely by YouTube, another one of Google’s property and then “Facebook”. Almost two months since the launch of Bing Search Engine, it is definitely a good sign for Microsoft about Bing’s growth in the current market. It still has a long way to go before it can compete head-to-head with Google and get into Search Engine Wars with them. But. Its growth, at least in terms of numbers, is quiet good, however, the overall usage, in comparison to Google, pales.

However, it still has a long way to go before it can ruffle the feathers of folks over at Google in the Search Engine wars. As for Bing, its growth, in sheer numbers has been good, however, the overall usage pales in comparison to Google.

Popularity: 1% [?]