Global by Design

I often point to Web sites like Google and Wikipedia as great examples of multilingual Web sites.
Google supports more than 120 languages and Wikipedia supports more than 150. Few other companies come close to supporting that many languages.
And yet there are thousands of languages in existence on this planet, most of which are not about [...]

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What separates good global Web sites from great global Web sites? Is it just the number of languages a Web site supports? Certainly languages are essential.
Although every Web site is global by nature, few Web sites support enough languages to be understood by the majority of the world’s Internet users.
But translation is just one aspect [...]

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In case you thought that Google’s austere home page design was sacrosanct, think again.
In an effort to win over the locals in Korea, Google has just launched a new design that not only features twice as much text, but also features animation:

Try it out yourself.
According to Search Engine Land, “The new, animated Google Korea home [...]

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Google’s new “cross language” search tool that I mentioned last week is now live and ready for testing at translate.google.com.

I gave the tool a brief run-through today and it is definitely rough around the edges. To get the best results you really need to put some thought into the search queries you enter — the [...]

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Google held its Searchology event today and formally launched its “universal” search interface.
And, according to Wired, Google will be launching its Cross Language Information Retreival “soon.”
Cross language search allows you to translate your search query into another language and have the search results translated back into your language in real time. So if you want [...]

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UPDATE: The 2008 Web Globalization Report Card is now available.
I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2007 Web Globalization Report Card.
This report — now in its fourth edition — rates how successfully companies develop Web sites for international markets. we look at things such as number of languages offered, depth of localization, global consistency, [...]

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Okay, so I finally got around to reviewing 2006 stats for Global by Design. My goal is to install a real-time “most popular” sidebar; until then, here are the most popular entries:
Baidu vs. Google: Round Two
The World According to Wikipedia
Just Don’t Do It: The Art of Slogan Translation
China and Japan: So Close But Yet [...]

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In our 2006 Web Globalization Report Card, the top two global Web sites overall were Google and Wikipedia. Both organizations support more than 100 languages and a fast-loading, flexible global design template.Which is why I was interested to read that Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder, is planning to develop a Wiki-based search engine. Of [...]

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Google’s revenue engine, Google Adwords, is available in more than 40 languages, so it’s not surprising to see Google’s international revenues growing so quickly. But this rate of growth is actually gaining momentum.
According to Google’s Q3 earnings release last week, “Revenues from outside of the United States contributed 44% of total revenues in the third [...]

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Google vs. Baidu is the heavyweight battle of the Chinese Internet market. And a lot of media coverage is being devoted to analyzing this fight. Based on what’s out there now, Baidu has won round one. The question now is whether Google on the ropes or simply pacing itself…
The New York Times posted a good [...]

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