So what is transliteration?
For those of us who are not native English speakers, it is easier to relate to. It is using one language to write the other. For example, हिंदी written as Hindi, चाय written as chaai an so on. Like I've said in my previous post, most Indians that I communicate with use transliteration to communicate with each other over instant messaging, emails, etc. As a matter of fact, it is so prevalent that there are several who will find it hard to remember the last time they used their native script ;-)
Anyway, it seems google is trying to tap into those of us by allowing us to search words in Indian script using english script (see screenshot). For instance, starting to type rashtra and google understands it as राष्ट्र. It even shows up search suggestions in the native script. Below is an example of this working in Tamil
Although the Google blog has announced it's release only for Tamil (See link at the bottom of this post), this seems to work for the following languages:
English | বাংলা | తెలుగు | मराठी | தமிழ் and हिन्दी
Get started by clicking one of the above links!
Read: Google search in Tamil (via Google blog)
See also: Google bots transliterate Indian languages