At its fourth annual Google for India 2018 event, Google introduced a new initiative to help publishers get their regional language content online. The initiative, called Navlekha, aims to make offline content fully editable so that publishers can easily post it online without expert digital knowledge.
Publishers interested in becoming part of the initiative can sign up on the Navlekha website. Google’s team responsible for the initiative will review all incoming applications and get in touch with publishers who qualify for the project. Once qualified, Google will help the publications set up their website and will further provide any assistance to maintain the online publication.
Furthermore, Google will provide conversion and publication tools to help publications edit their regional language PDFs which can then be posted online. The publishing tools will also give users the benefit to edit and curate content according to their preference. Publishers are expected to benefit from the initiative as their content will reach more and more users online.
Since there’s absolutely no setup cost for the first three years, publications wouldn’t have to worry about any investments to get their content online. As part of the initiative Google will also allow publications to make use of AdSense to monetize their content and benefit from the ad revenue.
Along with the announcement for the Navlekha initiative, Google also revealed that it will be adding regional language support to more of its apps and services in India to further increase its reach in the country. The company has also made changes to the Search feed which will now display news from both English and Hindi sources, using artificial intelligence that learns which type of stories a user likes the most. Google’s push to reach more and more people across the country as part of the Next Billion Users initiative will benefit greatly from the added regional language support.
