Google, the world’s leading search engine, will be looking into providing SMS, book, mobile and community based searches in the near future, as it gets aggressive in the Indian market and looks to generate advertising revenue in the country.

"SMS-based searches to target the mobile market and community-based searches, especially targeting people who frequent cyber cafes in India, are a few localisation end products that we could launch in India. Such products could be launched in India first before being launched globally," said Ms Sukhwinder Singh Cassidy, vice-president Google (Asia Pacific and Latin America), at a press conference in Mumbai on Thursday.

Google will also focus on searching content that they don’t currently provide, such as book and mobile based searches, specific to the Indian market, added Ms Cassidy.Earlier this week, Google announced the opening of their business operations in Delhi and Mumbai, as it expects the Indian e-commerce industry to become a Rs 800-crore industry in the coming year

The Indian information technology and ITeS sectors are expected to account for $36 billion in revenue in 2005-06, and increase of 28 per cent over the previous year, the National Association of Software and Service Companies said on Thursday.

Releasing the key findings of its "Strategic Review 2006", Nasscom chairman S. Ramadorai said, "The Indian IT-ITES sector continues to chart double-digit growth and is expected to exceed $36 billion in annual revenue in 2005-06. Out of this, software and services exports are estimated to grow by 32 per cent, to reach $23.4 billion. Indian IT-ITES is well on track to achieve the targets that the industry aspires to achieve by the end of the decade."

The Strategic Review 2006 reviews the industry’s performance in 2005, estimates the growth expected in the 2005-06, besides detailing the service line trends observed across the various industry segments over the past year.

"The previous year offered a steady growth for the industry. Along with increased presence of Indian IT companies across the globe, we saw new services lines emerging and the industry reached the next level in services offered. Mergers and acquisitions by Indian players was also a key trend. In spite of the growth seen so far, it is estimated that less than 10 percent of the addressable market for globally sourced IT-ITES has been captured till date, indicating significant headroom for growth," Mr Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom, said.

The review said that exports would account for nearly two-thirds of the total revenues, and the IT-ITeS sector is expected to contribute 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2005-06. "Engineering and R&D, software products hold significant opportunity for India - growing at a CAGR of 37 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively," it said.The review said that the total IT software and services employment is expected to reach 12,87,000 this fiscal.

Industry has already initiated several initiatives to further enhance the availability of and access to suitable talent for IT-ITES in India,"Complementing the continued growth in IT-ITES exports is a growing domestic market, which has come into its own, and is expected to grow by nearly 22 per cent," it said.

The review said that Indian IT companies were beginning to transition from outsourcing to global sourcing to drive the next phase of evolution in process quality frameworks and practices. "Having aligned their internal processes and practices to international standards, Indian companies are seeking to further increase the quality and productivity benchmarks," it said.

Google, the eponymous Internet search engine which could one day take over both GM and Ford Motor Company (just kidding), is getting chatty. I mean, Google will soon be launching chat features, called Google Talk. You can chat on Google if you have a Gmail ID, the by-invitation-only (so far). According to Google, Gmail account holders need to download the chat client, which takes about three minutes if you have broadband.

What does Talk have that other service providers don’t? To use a favorite term of the suits in the IT trade, the "differentiator" is that you get to decide how you want to get with your friends who are online."Email and instant messaging don’t have to be so different. And why should you always have to remember whether something important was said over email or IM?" says Google’s sales spiel. Indeed. Google Talk allows users to, get this, save chats, so you can search for them, print them, even reply to one over email.

The Talk client allows you to make free voice calls through your computer. "And there’s the Google Talk network. That’s the millions of people who use the Google Talk IM service, or a service that supports open server-to-server federation to chat with each other instantly. Gmail’s now on this network, which means that there are lots more people you can chat with from your Gmail account," it says.

What made Google attach chat to Gmail? The primary reason, it says, is to remove frustration from communications. You exchange a bunch of emails with someone when really, you’d rather just get an answer instantly. You use one program for your email, and another one for IM. You can’t remember who said what to you where. And sometimes you can’t even remember who wallaby385 in your buddy list is," the company says.Google claims that Gmail’s chat features address a lot of these problems.

"You don’t have to use another program or switch between email and IM—it’s all on the same interface. The friends you’re already emailing the most show up in your Quick Contacts as themselves, not the cryptic IM names they chose six years ago. And you can save your chats so you never have to lose something important just because someone told it to you over IM," it says.

Once you access your Gmail account, a window opens on your screen, displaying your Quick Contacts list. "Clicking on a name in Quick Contacts will start a chat session or an email," it says. Google Talk currently works on Windows IE 6.0+ and Firefox 1.0+. Happy chatting.