Indiatimes has launched a local search service in partnership with OnYoMo reports Pluggdin. The service can be accessed via Indiatimes’s wap portal as well as via SMS (ASK to 58888). I tried out the SMS search service with the query “Wall E Bandra” and was instead provided with results pointing…

Sure enough, the days without incident were indeed numbered. T-series has issued a notice to Guruji.com amongst other websites including MSN, MySpace and Bharatstudent. It has accused them of allowing users to upload content on their platforms. The report features quotes from T-Series, VP (digital content), Neeraj Kalyan, stating in…

Sequoia funded Guruji.com has launched a music search service. The release claims the service indexes songs ranging from 1932 till date, across all ‘major’ Indian languages. I put it to the test by throwing names of classical Indian artists from a 2003 recording and was pleased to find it threw…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) India is planning to expand its SMS search services in India reports ET. MS, which currently has a tie-up with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) for SMS search services is looking to partner with other operators, including RComm as part of an expansion which includes ‘four major operators’. The…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has reportedly launched a voice based local information service in India, in Hyderabad. Syed Abbas writes (via Labnol) that the service, launched on the number 1800-41-99-99-99 is similar to that of Just Dial, and after the call, 3-4 SMS’ are sent to the user. Google does have…

[by Cerius Shah] Guruji, the Sandstone Capital and Sequoia Capital funded search engine, has added Gujarati to its supported language searches, and also launched a WAP application (screencap) for enabled phones. The Gujarati virtual keyboard is supported only by IE currently. Also, there isn’t much of a Gujarati site. Besides,…

It’s Buy ByIndia or Bye ByIndia…the site which was acquired by Web2Corp in August 2006 is on the block, up for sale on ebay, here. Is this India’s first portal auction? I’m not sure…the minimum bid for site starts at $500,000 (around Rs. 2 crores), and the auction closes on…

[by Cerius Shah] The marriage season continues. Airtel goes with Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) with MSN and now Reliance has tied the application knot with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). According to this story, Reliance users can use the full suit of Yahoo’s oneSearch service (news, answers, Flickr and wiki’s.)…

We’d been told in the comments to this post that JustDial, a local search company, is in the process of launching an SMS service; apparently, there was a delay because not all operators had switched from the 5 digit short code to the five digit short code. JustDial has now…

More financial firepower for Guruji: the local search engine is reported to have received less than $10 million in funding from Sandstone Capital. Gujuji Co-founder and CEO Anurag Dod has been unavailable for comment. Guruji had received $7 million in seed funding from Sequoia in its first round, and was…

At the Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has announced that it has tied up with 9 new mobile operators for its OneSearch service; this takes Yahoo’s OneSearch tie-ups to twenty globally. Three of the new signups are Indian: state owned telco BSNL, Chennai based Aircel and Mumbai…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is expected to announce its Open Handset Alliance and Linux-based mobile software on Monday next week, and some reports that in India, Bharti Airtel is set to emerge an early partner for the project. Bharti already has a strategic partnership with Google on mobile search.

While advertising bigwigs like Euro RSCG and Publicis are scouting for digital acquisitions in India, search marketing company Pinstorm intends to raise money to fund international acquisitions. These acquisitions, says Pinstorm founder and CEO Mahesh Murthy in an email interview with ContentSutra, will allow the company to expand its offerings…

Four Interactive, a Bangalore-based online local search company has received $10 million in second round of funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank and Matrix Partners India, reports VCCircle. The company had received $2 million from Matrix Partners around seven months ago. Jake Seid, General Partner with Lightspeed is…

You’re reading this here first: Google has launched a local search engine for India: Google Local. The site is currently in beta, and at http://local.google.co.in/. At the same time, http://local.google.com directs to Google Maps. More later, I’m just going to give Google Local a go. Update: The site’s still being…

Google Labs India has released keyboards that allow searching in several Indic languages, including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil and Telugu, writes Ankit Solanki. It appears that the gadget can only be added to the iGoogle page…and that’s a pity cause it…

Local information search company JustDial has gone mobile with a WAP site - wap.justdial.com.  I’m surprised that they didn’t launch SMS services, and hence gain access to a larger mobile user base, given the low GPRS penetration in the country. There appears to be a click2call facility - giving users…

Four Interactive, the startup funded by Matrix Partners has launched a local search engine called Laila, which also allows users to review content. So far the content is limited to Bangalore, and the company intends to cover 22 cities (though no timeline is mentioned in the release). The listing+reviews model…

Last month, agencyfaqs.com reported Yahoo is probably zooming ahead of Google in the Indian mobile race. Now obviously, Google doesn’t seem to be sitting tight. The world’s largest Internet company is working towards merging “voice and data” in text messages sent from mobile phones and building local content in Indian…