Google adds virtual keyboard to Search

Only for available for certain languages

30 April 2010 11:58 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Google has announced a little bit of extra assistance for people who regularly find themselves trying to type in a non-Latin script on a Latin keyboard - an on-screen keyboard that appears next to the search box.

The company says that it's conducted research that shows that people prefer to formulate search queries in their own language, but then sometimes have difficulty getting that content into Google's search box, due to keyboards that aren't suited to the language they want to use.

Now, if you're using Google in a selection of languages, you'll get an onscreen keyboard that lets you input queries in your native language. It works with Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Finnish, Galician, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Tatar, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

To access the keyboard, click the little icon next to the search box and up it'll pop. Oh, and if your chosen language isn't in that list, and you'd love this functionality for yourself, then Google's got a page for you to vote for the next languages to get it. We've already voted for Klingon.

Via: googleblog.blogspot.com

Full tags

Software, Online, Websites, Search engines, Google, Keyboards