Here something new from the Google guys: Yesterday they unveiled the Google Internet Bus which will embark on a 45 day long road trip covering 15 destination of Tamil Nadu.
The Google Internet Bus homepage says :
“The Internet Bus Project is an attempt educate people about what the Internet is, and how it may be beneficial to their lives, by taking the Internet experience to them through a customised Internet-enabled bus, which will travel to several towns and cities across India.”
The Internet Bus is part of a mobile campaign which will cover the tier-II and tier-III cities of TN. The focus will mainly be on information, communication, entertainment and education and hence the facilities on the bus will be used to familiarize the people with search, email, social networking etc with the ultimate aim of showing them how the internet makes life simpler. At the stops, the local people will be provided with content in English as well as Tamil. Videos depicting how the world uses the world wide web in a variety of ways will be showed to these people to give them a better idea of the services that the net has to offer to them.
This campaign is an excellent initiative from Google from not only a social point of view but also from a marketing point of view. It comes at a time when the demand for internet facilities from rural areas is increasing at a fast pace. Also, as far as rural markets are concerned, it’s the mobile industry that will eventually bring the internet to the masses rather than the PCs.
The bus gets its internet connectivity using satellite.
So why Tamil Nadu?
According to Dr Ram Prasad, Head of R&D at Google, India, Tamil Nadu was chosen since a high percentage of online content is Tamil and also because a lot of Tamilian expats are active on the net. This is their pilot run and based on the feedback they receive they will see how to go about expanding this to other states. They also plan on sharing some of the feedback with the state government.
The first stop after Chennai is going to be Vellore, which it’ll reach on the 5th of February.
