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This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

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Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#51
post #41
post #2

This is the ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGDN9-oFJE - be sure to have subtitles on (unless you understand Hindi). One interesting observation about the ad: the search results that the girl deems to be good and informative are almost all Wikipedia hits. It's actually pretty similar to my situation: Google is basically a better Wikipedia searching tool than what Wikipedia provides.

Hindi or Urdu? Haha... I always find the "language vs dialect" thing very interesting. The distinction when it comes to Hindi and Urdu is totally political. Two of my old buddies, one an Indian, the other a Pakistani, could completely understand each other, yet both insisted that they spoke different languages (Punjabi/Hindi and Urdu respectively) Another friend of mind, who left Pakistan as a 10 year old, always jus…

Urdu and Hindu are essentially the same thing -- except one is written in classic Indian devanagari Sanskrit-style script, and the other is written in Arabic script. And, of course, regional dialect -- but really, those distinctions are excusable in daily speaking. The related language families are just so related across the board -- Marathi, Punjabi, and Hindi -- that one can pick up the other with just a bit of practice.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#52

As a fellow Indian, I just want to point out that this video and any other efforts to develop people-to-people relationships between India and Pakistan have zero effect on the ongoing conflicts between the nations. Indians love Pakistani singers, cricketers, food, their language(Weird, I'm not a native Hindi speaker. But people tell me that Pakistani's speak better Hindi than most Indians). I've heard from Pak friend…

The longest running head of the Pakistan Army in recent decades, General Musharraf, who was also the military dictator of the country for a good portion of that, made a lot of overtures towards some semblance of improving relations. Just pointing out that the Pakistan Army has people in it who think more about than just conflict with India.

Ironic as Musharraf instigated and led the last major Pakistan/India skirmish/war, then moved on to talking peace.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#53
post #26

Amazing work! What strikes me most is how little the language matters. You don't even have to watch it with subtitles to see how solid the editing was. Kudos to the entire team that worked on these videos.

the subtitles might have been a bit more necessary if all the on-screen text wasn't in english. That seemed like a strange choice for an ad produced by Google India.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#54
post #2

This is the ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGDN9-oFJE - be sure to have subtitles on (unless you understand Hindi). One interesting observation about the ad: the search results that the girl deems to be good and informative are almost all Wikipedia hits. It's actually pretty similar to my situation: Google is basically a better Wikipedia searching tool than what Wikipedia provides.

add &yt:cc=on to the YouTube URL [0] to enable subtitles.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGDN9-oFJE&yt:cc=on

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#55

Yes I was suitably manipulated. Good job, mass emotional manipulation team! But I am surprised they showed people searching for flight status and weather. Google Now is supposed to already know you're going to Delhi and just show you the weather there without you asking. Same for the flight status.

"Yes I was suitably manipulated. Good job, mass emotional manipulation team!" - thrownaway2424

Just agreeing with your sentiment, might as well share the downvotes.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#56
Very Interesting Ad and as being a Pakistani I can actually feel it. Although, technically finding places in Pakistan using Google Maps is not as easy as shown in the video. There are still many problems with wrong land marks and more.

But as a whole the content of the ad is very strong and positive that it can touch million more hearts!

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#57
I wish Google could also improve the visa process for India which gets a brief cameo in the video. I've been trying for weeks to obtain a visa now and have been thwarted by the Indian government and its designated consultant's computer systems at every turn. It's to the point I've given up and am going to pay for a service to do it.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#59
post #26

Amazing work! What strikes me most is how little the language matters. You don't even have to watch it with subtitles to see how solid the editing was. Kudos to the entire team that worked on these videos.

the subtitles might have been a bit more necessary if all the on-screen text wasn't in english. That seemed like a strange choice for an ad produced by Google India.

English is one of the official languages of India and almost all people who are wealthy enough to own a smartphone browse in English.

In fact, many kids actually go to schools where English is the primary teaching language - it's not uncommon for kids to not know how to say the days of the week in Hindi.

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