One thing that has made Google stand apart in terms of the kind of services it provided was how universal it could be. Even people that didn’t speak English at all could use the service, and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that it was available in so many different languages. However, with all of that having been said and out of the way it is important to note that Google might just be moving away from this model if its new rules on ads are anything to go by.
These new rules basically state that only ads that have been written out in approved languages are going to be allowed to go up. Google has a list of 49 languages (from Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, Urdu, Polish and some others) that it would be allowing ads in, and while the list does have major languages from all around the world it leaves out a lot of other languages (e.g: Punjabi, Kashmiri, Nepali) that are just as important. What this might do is that it might boost the usage of standard major languages in the world and make it so that smaller scale languages would start dying out a lot more since the internet would no longer have ads in those languages.
You might think that this is not that big of a deal but the truth of the situation is that Google is the single biggest company on the internet which means that if it doesn’t allow endangered and rare languages to thrive then these languages might just disappear from the internet entirely, and since the internet is a big factor in global culture this would have a serious real world impact as well by damaging diversity. Modern geography is the result of some rather torrid periods of conflict and conquest, which means that in a lot of places there are large groups of people that were once subjugated who might be free now but they are being forced to speak a language that is not theirs. This new rule from Google might just set a dangerous precedent that could prove to be a death blow for such minorities.
Read next: Is Google Maps same for every country around the world? A research says No!
These new rules basically state that only ads that have been written out in approved languages are going to be allowed to go up. Google has a list of 49 languages (from Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, Urdu, Polish and some others) that it would be allowing ads in, and while the list does have major languages from all around the world it leaves out a lot of other languages (e.g: Punjabi, Kashmiri, Nepali) that are just as important. What this might do is that it might boost the usage of standard major languages in the world and make it so that smaller scale languages would start dying out a lot more since the internet would no longer have ads in those languages.
You might think that this is not that big of a deal but the truth of the situation is that Google is the single biggest company on the internet which means that if it doesn’t allow endangered and rare languages to thrive then these languages might just disappear from the internet entirely, and since the internet is a big factor in global culture this would have a serious real world impact as well by damaging diversity. Modern geography is the result of some rather torrid periods of conflict and conquest, which means that in a lot of places there are large groups of people that were once subjugated who might be free now but they are being forced to speak a language that is not theirs. This new rule from Google might just set a dangerous precedent that could prove to be a death blow for such minorities.
Read next: Is Google Maps same for every country around the world? A research says No!
