Is it the calm, tranquil music that plays in the background, the visually appeasing illustrations or the fact that an Indian epic is recreated with a digital touch that makes Google’s adaptation of the Ramayana so spectacular? I feel it’s a fitting tribute to one of India’s glorious relics.
The Ramayana is an Indian epic (Lord of the Rings epic) portraying the battle between good and evil. The classic fable chronicles the journey of Lord Ram and ends in him vanquishing the evil Ravana after a legendary battle.
The almighty Google has always found new and innovate ways to push their products into market. The Google Ramayana is yet another stratagem to promote Google’s arsenal of tools to the common users. It is a Chrome experiment that recreates the above tale in an HTML5 website with graphic illustrations detailing each landmark of the Ramayana. The Google Ramayana fuses Google’s tools like Gtalk, Google Maps, Gmail, etc. into the story. The characters use Gtalk to interact with each other, Google Maps give the user information about the locations, and Jatayu is depicted as a blogger! The integration is not obtrusive; it blends into the story line well; the batter doesn’t have any lumps. The HTML5 website only works on Google Chrome and not on other browsers (touché Firefox).
The navigation of the website is smooth owning to its use of HTML5. The art and illustrations done by Therese Larson are vivid and playful. The floating clouds are a neat addition to the website giving it a sense of divinity. The website would have been perfect had it been in English. The god damn Bahasa is tough to understand. Google, why you no put Google Translate on the website?
Recent Comments