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“India has a mere four per cent broadband connectivity. In the remoter parts of the country,people have no clue what an internet is,” he says. The reasons are simple: absence of access,of local content and contextually relevant applications. In fact,the Google team was taken aback when around two years back,they designed a bus to travel to villages in Tamil Nadu to check their Net penetration. “Tamil Nadu is a fairly literate state,and we were surprised how little people knew about the Internet. We realised the need to create awareness and educate people about its uses and make their lives simpler,” says Chawla. “The project is not just about Google,it is about the Internet changing lives. It is about creating a difference to people’s lives,like the millet farmer from Tumkur (Karnataka) who,after visiting the Google bus,asked his son to go online to search for a job,” he adds.

Low internet penetration has often been attributed to the language barrier,the reason Google has introduced features like translation and transliteration. But what if there is no access to a computer? “Well,almost everyone has a mobile phone,and access to information becomes easier with mobile maps,mobile search,voice search and mobile Orkut.” Google has also created platforms like the Be NetSmart campaign aimed at students,parents and teachers to educate them on Internet safety. To sustain this activity,Google has tied up with NIIT to provide free classes and online training to those who visit the bus.

“In India,we have been working on making the Internet more relevant and accessible. Search engines are used to gather useful local information like business listings,railways and flight status,cricket scores,movie reviews and more. In addition,there are products like Google SMS Search,SMS Channels,Google Local Search,and Google Map Maker,” says Chawla. That apart,one can avail transliteration in 14 Indian languages,Google News in four Indian languages,machine translation for English-to-Hindi (bidirectional) and soft keyboards for a vast majority of Indian languages.

In city,the bus will showcase informative content both in English and Punjabi and how Internet services can be used by mobile phone owners. Users across India can follow the bus through its journey,see pictures and videos and join online communities by visiting http://www.google.co.in/internetbus.