Hyderabad: Google India today announced the launch of an India serving platform, Google India Labs, and two new India-specific products, Google Local Search and Google Local Business Centre to provide locally relevant information and opportunities for Indian users.

According to the internet search leader, Google Local Search has been designed as a useful tool for Indian users looking for locally relevant information on local businesses like restaurants, shops, and hotels

Google Local Business Centre has been designed to allow businesses to add their information to Google Local free of cost to be displayed when users search on Google Local Search. Google has already launched Local Business Centre already in other countries.

"Local Search and Local Business Centre will provide our users with better local business results by increasing the corpus and depth of business listings, and benefit local businesses by ensuring visibility on the Internet for free," said Vinay Goel, head of products, Google India.

Google Labs is a technology playground for products that are in the process of development and require market feedback. This launch makes India one of the few countries to have a country-focused labs program. Globally, Google has seven labs across US, China, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain.

India labs will serve as a platform to showcase innovations that are particularly relevant to the Indian market and will also allow users to glance into Google's future offerings. These products will come from Google offices across the globe, including the India R&D centre in Bangalore, but will specifically cater to the needs of Indian users.

It will also give users a platform to provide valuable feedback to further improve the products. India Labs would initially showcase two India-centric products -

• The Indic on-screen keyboard iGoogle Gadget will let users type search queries in 14 Indian languages by choosing letters from an on-screen keyboard using a mouse. Users would be able to add the gadget of their chosen language to their personalised iGoogle home page and use it to search for content in their language.
  
• Google Indic transliteration allows the user to type in Hindi using phonetically equivalent English text entered through an English keyboard. For instance, typing "Bharat" would give display its Hindi version on the screen. Hindi transliteration was launched on the Blogger service earlier this year, and this labs service.
  
  It is a standalone offering and users can create Hindi content and use it in applications of their choice, such as mails, documents and so on. The product uses a machine learning-based approach that can learn from corrections made by the users.
  

Speaking on the launch of Google India Labs, Dr Prasad Ram, head, Google R&D, India said, "Our vision for India's 60th year of independence is to empower our Indian users by providing organized, easily accessible information and products which encourage the creation and consumption of locally relevant content. India Labs is one such effort that will enable users to test and provide valuable feedback on products that are most relevant to them."