Irish Echo
This story appeared in the issue of March 3-9, 2003

Google goes Gaelic
Internet search engine targets Irish speakers
By Stephen McKinley

Google, the world's leading Internet search engine, has launched a Gaelic version of its classic no-frills search page that searches only Web sites "an Gaeilge." It's at: www.google.ie/ga.

The new Gaelic site is a subset of the national site for Ireland, www.google.ie, which allows Internet users to search only Web sites in Ireland.

Google has rolled out many national sites that allow users to search according to a specific country -- www.google.ca, for example, is related to all things Canadian -- but Irish speakers say the move with Gaelic is an important boost to the Irish language, especially when the European Union decided not to make Ireland's native tongue one of the Union's official languages. Google now offers its search engine in 97 languages, including Basque and the fictional Star Trek language, Klingon.

Google has an Irish connection going back to March 2003, when the company opened its European headquarters in Dublin. With such a small niche of the Internet existing in Gaelic, however, how proficient is the Gaelic-specific search engine?

Google boasts that its "tens of thousands of computers" now scour as many as 6.6 billion different Web pages in order to deliver consistently accurate results to the savvy searcher.

The 6.6 billion items comprise 4.28 billion Web pages, 880 million images, 845 million Usenet messages, and a growing collection of book-related information pages. A typical Google search of this vast world of information takes about half a second.

Noreen Bowden is an editor with The Emigrant.ie, an Irish news and culture Web site based in Galway. She has also been an Internet user since the earliest days of the World Wide Web and tested the Gaelic search engine recently.

"I was looking up the word 'deorai,' which is Gaelic for exile or wanderer, or emigrant," Bowden said after she tried out the new search engine. "Most of the answers I got were from Web sites in English where someone had used the word [in isolation]."

That the Gaelic search engine does not home in on Gaelic-only Web sites is more likely to do with the utter dominance of English as the language of the Internet, she added, than that the search engine is a blunt tool.

In February, Google was named global brand of the year for the second year running by the web consultancy Interbrand, an astonishing dominance for a company that was founded in 1998. Apple, Mini and Coca-Cola were placed second, third, and fourth, respectively, in the same survey.

"It's always great to be recognized by our users. But if you talk to our technicians, they'll tell you we still have work to do to make our search technology better," a Google representative said.

Google has denied a spate of rumors recently that it is about to go public, with an IPO that experts say could generate an initial $4 billion. Wired magazine recently revealed that in 2003, Microsoft offered Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin $10 billion for the company. They refused.

When Google launched, it faced a host of search engines but its efficiency quickly led to dominance in the search market. One of the search engines crushed by Google was Teoma.com -- 'teoma' is Gaelic for expert.

unfortunately, I think I would be at the very BACK of the class . Gaelic looks very difficult to learn. French seems alot easier. Just wrap a rubber band around your lips when you speak German seems pretty easy...all you have to do is talk Angry and beat your fist. Speaking Japanese is like dropping a bunch of silverware, eg; ching ching chang chong Who am I forgetting?

and for english you put a hot potato in your mouth

I'm going to start learning gaelic.

We should have a separate forum in only gaelic, and our online teacher will be german !!

Yeh!!!! Thats the bestest idea since sliced bread.



What wass sliced bread the bestest idea since?