Google India Women in Engineering Award 2008

Posted by Manoj Varghese, Human Resources Director, India

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 women to excel in computing and technology, the India team has taken our first steps: in December we launched the Google India "Women in Engineering Award" to recognize women in the field of computer science and engineering.

In its inception year, we have extended this award to recognized engineering schools across India; it is open to any woman student in computer science engineering who meets the application criteria. This initiative has been received positively, as has been indicated by the inundating queries and subsequent applications. The last date for applying is January 31st and we are looking forward to hearing from even more applicants.

After our panel reviews all applications, the winners will be announced in a little more than a month, on February 29th. The winners will be invited to visit the Google engineering office in Bangalore during first week of March for a conclave comprising of keynotes, panel discussions, tech talks, breakouts and an award ceremony.

We hope this award will encourage students to take up computer science engineering as their study, and perhaps inspire some of you to take this up as a career too.

Crossing team and global boundaries

Posted by Reza Behforooz, Software Engineer

In my first month at Google, I complained to a friend on the Gmail team about a couple of small things that I disliked about Gmail. I expected him to point me to the bug database. But he told me to fix it myself, pointing me to a document on how to bring up the Gmail development environment on my workstation. The next day my code was reviewed by Gmail engineers, and then I submitted it. A week later, my change was live. I was amazed by the freedom to work across teams, the ability to check in code to another project, the trust in engineers to work on the right thing, and the excitement and speed of getting things done for our users. Engineers across our offices (and across projects) have access to the same code; I didn't have to ask for anyone's permission to work on this.

Since then, I've done my best to use my 20% time on other projects. A few weeks ago, I noticed that our engineering team in India had launched an on-screen keyboard for several Indic languages on Labs. I speak Farsi, and thought it would be useful to make one for myself and ham-zaboonam (that's Farsi for 'people who speak my language'). After launching my latest project for Google Maps, I emailed M. T. Raghunath, the engineer in India who built out the keyboard Gadgets, to learn how I could make one for Farsi. He had already worked with several language experts to create keyboards in 14 Indic languages and had recently included right-to-left support for Urdu and Arabic, which he created with the help of Googlers from our Hyderabad office. He was excited and pointed me to the code. After a week of iteration, you too can now use the Farsi Gadget.

Google has many engineering offices around the world; I currently work in Seattle and M. T. works in Bangalore. We have a lot more engineers than a few years ago when I made the changes to Gmail, but I'm happy to relive the same magic I shared with the Gmail team with a Googler across the globe. By the way, a Kashmiri Gadget is also available, thanks to help from Sarwat Nisa, a Hyderabad-based Googler.

Two more reasons to type in Hindi

Posted by Aditya Kulkarni and Balaji Gopalan, Software Engineers

As some of you have already noticed, we've combined Google Suggest with our Indic transliteration technology to give you a new way to search the web in Hindi.

You can type your queries using a regular English keyboard, and we'll show you suggestions and completions of your query in phonetically equivalent Hindi. This means that you can type "amit" and see Hindi suggestions like "अमिताभ" and "अमिताभ बच्चन". Once you're happy with one of the suggestions, you can click it to get search results in Hindi. Try this out on the Google India Hindi homepage and explore all the Hindi content available on the web.



Quite a lot of people have also asked for a Googley way to scrap your friends on orkut in Hindi. You can now type in Hindi the same way you do in Blogger and on the Google India Labs page. If you have selected "Hindi" in the "languages i speak" field in your orkut profile, you'll see the "Type in Hindi" checkbox on the scrap pages. Just check the box to start scrapping in your favorite tongue.

We're eager to hear your feedback and suggestions, so please let us know what you think. Don't forget to visit the Google India Labs page to see what we've been working on.

Google Labs India

Posted by M T Raghunath and Gokul Nath Babu Manoharan, Software Engineers

Keeping up with the spirit and celebrations of India's 60th year of Independence, we present to you a new platform that showcases our favourite ideas for Indian users: Google India Labs. Enthusiastic bloggers noted our initial announcement on 15th August; now here's the full story.

Though 60 years young, India has a history dating back to the dawn of civilization. The incredible diversity of this great nation is the kind of challenge Google loves. And in line with our mission of making information universally accessible, we're now offering an easier way to search in 14 Indian and South Asian languages. You don't need a special keyboard or software; all you need is a web browser, a mouse, and a Unicode font for your language. So whether you speak অসমীয়া (Assamese), বাংলা (Bengali), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), हिंदी (Hindi), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), മലയാളം (Malayalam), मराठी (Marathi), नेपाली (Nepali), ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Oriya), ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (Punjabi), संस्कृतम् (Sanskrit), සිංහල (Sinhala), தமிழ் (Tamil), or తెలుగు (Telugu), we can help you find content on the web in your language. To get started, add one or more of these iGoogle gadgets to your personalized iGoogle home page. You can use these gadgets to compose queries, and ask Google to search the vast Internet in your very own language.

If you're interested in writing in Hindi, we have brought out the transliteration feature from Blogger into an independent product of its own: Google Indic Transliteration. This tool will let you type in Hindi, using an English keyboard. Type out words phonetically, and let Google convert them into the correct Hindi word. For example, type "Bharat" to see "भारत". You'll soon discover that our sophisticated transliteration technology makes it really easy to compose in Hindi. Our algorithm might get the occasional word wrong, but it is always willing to learn. You can teach it by clicking on the wrong word and correcting it. This is also available as an iGoogle Gadget.

We've really enjoyed bringing these products to you, and we're eager to hear from you. There is a new user community for discussion around our new technologies, and we'll keep adding new things to our Labs page, so please visit us often.

Namaste India!

Posted by M T Raghunath and Gokul Nath Babu Manoharan, Software Engineers

Happy 60th birthday, India! We can't wait to celebrate, but we're going to wait a few days for the formal unwrapping of our gift to Indian users. Check back and we'll have news shortly.

YouTube in 9 more domains

Posted by Sakina Arsiwala, International Manager, YouTube

The YouTube community began life speaking English, but thanks to the uniquely expressive medium of video, today there is a global village of content makers and viewers. With a noteworthy number of YouTube visitors now coming from outside the U.S., it's high time we go multilingual.

Today at a Google press event in Paris, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are announcing the launch of nine new domains in Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland, and the UK.

In response to many requests, each new site is fully translated and localized for each country including content (Featured Videos, Director Videos, Promotions), as well as the interfaces, search, user support, and such community features as video ratings, sharing, and content flagging. And these new localized versions are built using Google search technology, so you can quickly find more of what you want to see. Perhaps best of all, you can continue to use youtube.com, or move to one of these localized sites -- and switch seamlessly between the two. Happy creating, viewing and sharing!

Update: Removed link to user content.