IVR

The classic pattern of technology disruption often involves startups that challenge market leaders with low-cost versions of products already on the market.

 

Derided as “toys” or “consumer grade,” startups over time often can continue to add robustness and features that ultimately result in the new products challenging the legacy products head to head, feature for feature, with equivalent reliability but much better value and price.

 

Google (News - Alert) is on the way to doing that with its Gmail service. It has been offering enterprise versions, with better security and management features. Now it offers on-the-fly, one-click translation into 41 languages. And the new feature will be most valuable for the largest global enterprises, with multi-lingual workforces, as well as smaller firms operating in a multi-national context.

 

The more-typical adoption pattern is consumer, then smaller business and lead users in larger organizations, followed by work group adoption and then finally enterprise support. Language translation, though, will leap right over to the global enterprise space.

 

The feature can be activated by clicking on the “Settings” tab in Gmail, followed by the “Labs” tab. Once in Google Labs, users simply enable “Message Translation.” Those using “Premier” and “Education” editions of Google Apps will need to enable Gmail Labs from within the administration control panel before proceeding.

 

“If your entire company uses Gmail, e-mail communications between people in your company can take place in the language that’s most comfortable for them,” Jeff Chin, Google product manager says. “Each person can write messages in their native language and the recipients can translate the messages into their respective native languages.”

 

“It can be quite useful in providing the quick gist of a message, especially if you receive a lot of e-mails that aren’t in your native tongue,” he wrote. “If the translation is awkward or not quite right, you can quickly return to the original message by clicking ‘View original message’ link.”

 

And given the current hype around cloud computing, Google simply notes that the new feature is enabled by thousands of computers.

 

Gmail Labs now is available in 49 languages. Gmail Labs allows users to activate some niche features, including the ability to view YouTube (News - Alert) previews in an e-mail.