back to article Google finds 200m more people to advertise to in a single day

Google has learned to speak Bengali and found an extra 200 million people to advertise to along the way. Bengali is the world's sixth-most-prevalent language, is the official tongue of Bangladesh and is widely spoken in some India states. Yet the language's 200 million speakers have been cruelly denied the bounty that is …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And next....

    Undiscovered tribes of South America, Google is coming to help you, and everything they offer is free!

    Imagine, people could be "monetized" before they're even known to science! A bit of machine learning, and the computers could work in the local language before outsiders can even translate to and from it. And finally, no part of the world will be free from a ready supply of Coca Cola, Adidas tee shirts, or from the unprincipled spying of Big Tech. Get there quick, Google, I'll bet there's no rules on data protection in that part of the world at the moment.

    1. iromko

      Re: And next....

      Let them tap into China first.

  2. Lysenko

    Google recently added eight new Indian languages to voice search, [snip] and Urdu joining Hindi.

    When spoken (i.e. "voice search), Urdu and Hindi are dialects of the same language. Urdu is simply Hindi written with the Arabic alphabet instead of Devanagari. The same politicized nonsense occurs in Europe when the Serbian and Croatian dialects languages are discussed, and for much the same reasons.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    At which hour art those gents going to doth an olde english v'rsion?

    I needeth some new gaskins.

    1. frank ly

      Tom's Auto Repairs can supply the gaskets you need - at low low prices !

    2. katrinab Silver badge

      And when are they going to do actual proper English as spoken / written in England rather than that mangled up version used in a former colony?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        And when are they going to do actual proper English as spoken / written in England

        Don't get me wrong here, I'm British, and I really enjoy a good bit of jingoism. But English spoken by whom? In many parts of England there's strong regional accents, and in Inner London's densely populated squalor, over 40% of the population were born abroad, so English isn't even their mother tongue. On an everyday basis few people in England speak the Queen's English, which is essentially an invention between the late 1700s and 1950, that people somehow think is a linguistic form set in stone. Before that, so few people could write or afford books that English (like other languages, although perhaps more readily) continually evolved according to the needs of its time.

        It is tempting to dismiss the colonials' abuse of the language, but we really ought to be pleased and proud that it is so widely spoken, so open to change and adoption of new words and new variants of grammar. And if you do want to adopt a historical form of the language, there's plenty of research that indicates that US English is far closer to the common form of the language spoken in the UK in the 17th and 18th centuries.

        Now, if your point is just that you don't like the synthesised voices of "talky" tech products, or their accuracy with anything other than mainstream US pronunciation, you'd have a fair point that Yorkshiremen, Scousers, Geordies and others might sympathise with.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          I hadn't thought of the regional differences, that must be why when I search for muffins I get some type of cake rather than the bread based product I'm supposed to.

      2. hellwig

        re: former colony

        'Murica! 'Murica!

        Hey, can we get a 'Murica icon over here?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Mushroom

          Re: re: former colony

          You already have one >

  4. nickx89

    grey areas

    Some countries of asia, africa, and europe are considered grey areas where there is less potential for business or chances of fraud are likely. Even if they advertise the return might not be as expected. If the services in India targets bangladeshi people then that makes sense.

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