14 DAY TRIAL // "Yahoo! is the first Internet company to introduce Hindi language services in the country", said John Kremer, vice president, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Inc. Good news for the 200 million Indians who are expected to come online in the next few years and even better news for the advertisers who will want to reach out to the non-English speaking Indian population, according to Pranesh Anthapur, chief administrative officer of Yahoo! India.
This follows very closely in the footsteps of the new Instant Messenger that Yahoo! released this very morning, version 9.0 Beta, which also has support for the Hindi language (split into nine regional languages), among five other new ones.
It seems that the Indian Internet market is very sought after by both Google and Yahoo! Colossi as they seem to go head to head in trying to conquer it. Yahoo! already has about 900 engineers at a research center in Bangalore, while Google only has on its payroll a ninth of that number, but it did make India the first R&D center outside of the US, in 2004. Anyone using the search engine in India can find out that Google is hiring, and that is about 75% of the internet-using population as opposed to the only 25% that prefers Yahoo!, data collected by the online research firm JuxtConsult.
Google seems to be more alluring to the public, those working there speaking of a halo effect. For its employees, it is said to "increase marriage prospects in a culture where title and income are critical to the practice of arranged matchmaking" (Sheridan Prasso, Fortune contributing editor).
Yahoo will not be standing around doing nothing, the coming to the Helm of Jerry Yang instantly boosting almost every domain that had lingered into a haze of stillness under the former CEO. And the results can be seen already, many changes have been made in all areas, including at the head of the company where several important people have up and left, leaving Yang pretty "lonely in the decision-making process". So Yahoo! is in India to stay and to offer all its old and some new services in Hindi in an attempt to re-take its crown as king of the internet there.