Friday, 4 April 2008

We Will Help You Walk the Road, Says Yahoo

For the first time in India, Yahoo India has launched maps in local Indian languages and with walking directions. Apart from English, Yahoo India maps is now available in 9 different languages. Users can now experience it in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi.

With driving directions introduced recently, Yahoo India is offering the option of walking directions in its maps. Users can walk to their destinations with a simple walking route. These directions can be sent to a mobile phone as an SMS. There is also an option to pan and zoom to any point on the map, save it as an image and share it with others.

Gopal Krishna, Head of Audience, Yahoo India, said “At Yahoo India, we are constantly developing innovative products and services that provide compelling experiences to our users. For the first time in India, walking directions and maps in local languages are being introduced by Yahoo India. This aligns well with Yahoo India’s overall strategy of enabling more users to experience the Internet on a PC or Mobile.”

Directions across 179 cities, 4,767 towns, and 226,114 villages can be searched over Yahoo India maps. Users can also search for over 3 million points of interest already marked by Internet users from around the web. Launched in April 2007, Yahoo India maps is a Web 2.0 product built out of Yahoo’s R&D centre in Bangalore.