In a move towards showing increased support for Asian businesses and standing against violent acts targeting the Asian community, Google is adding a feature that would let self-identified Asian-owned businesses on its searches and maps. When the tag has been added, these businesses would be identified using a red and orange flower.
Google has been involved in such initiatives for quite some time now. The first one was the addition of the identification of a women-owned business in 2018. Since then, there have been several other identifiers added by Google. These include tags for veteran-owned businesses (added in 2018), black-owned businesses (added in 2020), Latino-owned businesses (added in 2021), and most recently, a tag for businesses led by the members of the LGBTQ community which was added in June this year.
In a blog post, Leanne Luce, who is a product manager at Google, said, “It’s our hope the Asian-owned attribute brings people together and provides our communities with much-needed recognition: to help them be seen and thrive.” Leanne further added that Google as a corporation was excited about this addition and said, “We are excited to spotlight Asian-owned businesses and highlight part of what makes our community unique and important.” The tagging
Additionally, in an attempt to increase support for Asian-owned businesses, they are expanding their partnership to facilitate help for another 10,000 Asian-owned businesses. Other corporations, too, like Yelp, have come forward recently to help businesses, with the platform adding identification for Asian-owned businesses in 2021 itself.
The support page for adding and removing tags states that this tagging feature is only available in the US for now. However, if things work out well, it could be a valuable addition to Google services across the globe.
For more technology news, product reviews, sci-tech features and updates, keep reading Digit.in.