Cashing in on the lucrative non-English speaking international markets, Google will launch a new system designed to automatically translate Internet search requests in 12 different languages – Arabic, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese, and of course, English.
The tools allow Google’s users to enter search requests in their native languages and then choose to have the phrases as well as the accompanying results automatically translated into another language. Also, users can then click on a link and have the entire Web page translated through a service that Google had already been offering.
Just like any multinational companies, overseas expansions add to the bottom line of the business. In the case of Google, it already earned $7.6 B or 72% of Internet revenues from US and UK in 2006. Increasing market share in these markets proves to be a very daunting task given the mounting competition. Conversely, venturing in key international markets can easily rake additional $4.9 billion to $8.7 billion for Google according to American Technology Research analyst Rob Sanderson.
However, the Mountain View-based company will challenge Yahoo!, Web’s 2nd biggest search engine already offering translation tools BabelFish and automatic translation services in Germany, Japan, and France as early as 2005.
Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 5:40 am