(2 November 2007 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: AOL has announced the next steps in its global expansion effort with the launch of new local language versions of the AOL India portal, www.aol.in, and the launch of Truveo's video search engine serving eight countries, including India.

AOL president and COO Ron Grant says, "India is a very important market for AOL, and these announcements show our commitment to serving online consumers here with a robust portal and industry leading video search tools.

"These are also important steps in our ongoing efforts to make AOL a truly global company. We started this year with three international portals in Europe, and we will end 2008 with a presence in 30 countries around the world."

AOL.in is launching content channels in the Hindi and Tamil languages, improving the breadth of AOL's offerings at a time when the online audience in India is skyrocketing. The number of Internet users in urban India has grown by 28 per cent in the past year, and about 60 per cent of all active online Indians (30 million) prefer to read in local Indian languages. The Hindi and Tamil language portals will have language sections in news, cinema and astrology

As the first step of this international expansion, Truveo is unveiling video search sites for India, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the UK. In India, for example, users will be able to search relevant videos which are popular across categories such as cricket, films, music, news.

Over the next two months, Truveo will build on this expansion with the launch of video search sites in additional countries including Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia and Turkey.

AOL Video CEO and co-founder Timothy Tuttle says, "The recent explosion of online video is a worldwide phenomenon, and all over the world, users and major media companies are putting video content on the Web. Truveo's mission is to index and organize all of it so users can easily find the video they want – wherever they are in the world."