As the ‘bus’ winds its way through Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Google finds that both technology as well as lack of awareness present challenges to the growth of Internet in India.

For its part, Google is certainly doing its homework.  The company is pushing simple but popular services such as search, email and online maps.  It is promoting the availability of language options on the Internet. But, as Google itself acknowledges, localisation is not just about getting the language right. 

India will have close to 500 million mobile phone users by this year-end. As Google probably realises, its findings reinforced by its touring bus, the Internet will need to be delivered to the average Indian through the cell phone and not the computer.

On that hot Wednesday afternoon in Tumkur, the slice of population that passed through the Google bus could represent any Indian town.  Krishnaiah A., a senior health inspector at the T.B. Hospital in Tumkur said he was months away from retirement but had never used a computer on his job.  “The hospital has a computer but we also have a computer operator,” he said.

Husband and wife, Suresh Rajashekhara and Jayaratna, both Kannada teachers in a nearby village school, last saw a computer when they went through a teachers’ computer training a couple of years ago.  Teenagers Kokila G.T., the daughter of a local tile-layer and Kavya N., the daughter of a welder, both school graduates have just joined their first computer class, paid for in installments, and are learning to use the keyboard and mouse.

... contd.