Only a few days after Microsoft announces a widget to bring machine translation into your Web site’s home page, Google takes a step towards integrating machine translation into its home page.
According to the unofficial Google blog, Google has inserted its “translate” link into a number of localized Google sites — such as France and Spain. Google.com is not yet included.
This is just another sign that translation is becoming a core element of Google’s world domination strategy. If you’re curious about Google’s market share around the world — here’s an interesting “crowdsourced” document.
Here is the France home page:
I rarely ever use this pull-down menu and I wonder how many others do. I realize that Google strives to keep an austere home page and this is one solution — but I’m not sure it’s worth it. If users can’t find the translation link they may never use it.
Google Translate is no longer growing up, it’s growing out — integrating itself across all of its many properties.
