Only a few days after Microsoft announces a widget to bring machine translation into your Web site’s home page, Google takes a step towards integrating machine translation into its home page.
According to the unofficial Google blog, Google has inserted its “translate” link into a number of localized Google sites — such as France and Spain. Google.com is not yet included.
This is just another sign that translation is becoming a core element of Google’s world domination strategy. If you’re curious about Google’s market share around the world — here’s an interesting “crowdsourced” document.
Here is the France home page:
I rarely ever use this pull-down menu and I wonder how many others do. I realize that Google strives to keep an austere home page and this is one solution — but I’m not sure it’s worth it. If users can’t find the translation link they may never use it.
Google Translate is no longer growing up, it’s growing out — integrating itself across all of its many properties.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Jim DeLaHunt // Mar 25, 2009 at 6:56 pm
John, the link you provide for the “crowdsourced” document on Google’s market share (http://www.globalbydesign.com/blog/2009/03/25/google-translate/97,500.00) comes up as “not found” when I click on it.
2 John Yunker // Mar 26, 2009 at 3:16 am
Hi Jim — I fixed the link — sorry about that…
JY
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