Google expands language support for its apps in India

What you need to know

• Google is expanding Indian language support for Maps, Search, and Lens.
• 9 Indian languages being added, including Gujarati, Marathi, and Tamil.
• This and other announcements were recently made at Google's L10n India event.

Google continues to expand the languages it supports across its various services around the world, and now it has added support for nine Indian languages across three key apps — Maps, Search, and Lens. This announcement was made by Google at its L10n India event, according to a post on Android Police.

India has 22 official languages and many unofficial languages and dialects, so it makes sense that Google wants to be able to support as many as possible in the fastest growing country in the world. Among the nine languages that Google added are Gujarati, Marathi, and Tamil. Maps, Search, and Lens are natural apps and services to bring additional language support to, as they are essential for navigation, discovery, and translation. Google let it be known that the Indian market is tops for Lens usage, with more monthly active users than any other country or region.

Google hosted the virtual L10n event to showcase its language modeling and localization features for the Indian market. A big effort to come out of the showcase was a new artificial intelligence/machine learning model called MuRIL (Multilingual Representations for Indian Languages) that is designed to better bridge the gaps in communication and understanding across multiple Indian languages.

Google is no stranger to testing out new ideas and platforms in India. The most recent version of the Google Pay app was tested for over two years in India as Tez, and the success of that app there led it to usurp the older Google Pay experience. Now that one of the best cheap Android phones, the Pixel 4a, is available in India for a competitive price, expect millions more happy Google users in the subcontinent.