Google India’s HR managers may be in for a hectic time.  Days after Google announced $1,000 bonuses and ten percent raises for all the company’s workers, a high-ranking employee has committed to hiring at least 200 engineers in the country.

For a long time, Orkut has been the one bright spot in Google’s social media stable; it’s been the sole product that became really popular in some markets, even as everything else struggled to gain users (and/or not get the axe).  Only new stats indicate that Facebook’s beaten Orkut in India, which represented one of its two strongholds.

If they weren’t already doing so, Google’s lawyers should start paying attention to the BlackBerry encryption proceedings.  It turns out that India’s government intends to target Google (and Skype) once it’s finished trying to gain access to messages sent courtesy of RIM.

India is often considered a place of car guys’ nightmares, where the roads are packed with vehicles and anything from a motorcycle to a bus is likely to swerve across lanes and run red lights.  But Indian police are now addressing the problem in an innovative fashion, using Facebook as a sort of crowdsourced traffic camera.

A country that’s known for its fast-developing tech industry – and for its enormous population – should soon have improved access to Google Apps.  Google and Tata Communications announced a deal today that involves both Google Apps and India (for starters).

It’s full speed ahead for Facebook in India.  The company’s new office in the country is supposed to open within two months, and when it is running at full capacity, reports indicate that the office is supposed to accommodate a whopping 500 or so employees.

A good drive can be one of life’s most enjoyable experiences.  But a bad one is, of course, no fun at all, and poor directions are often responsible for making things take a turn for the worse.  So Google appears to be overhauling the way in which it tells people to get from one point to another.

Today’s a big day for Twitter.  Twitter – which still lists fewer than 80 people on its payroll – has announced a partnership with Bharti Airtel, India’s largest integrated telecom company.

This development probably won’t lead to every Bharti Airtel customer becoming a Twitter addict, but it will eliminate big some obstacles.  First of all, the customers needn’t worry about having hardwired Internet connections – the partnership is all about texting.  Second, a lot of fees have been waived.

Numbers from comScore this week, revealed that Google sites account for nearly 30% of all time spent online in India and Brazil. That is three times higher than the average.

The H1N1 flu virus has hit Google India, and although things aren’t as bad as they might have been, it’s having some rather significant effects: around 100 people have gone to a hospital for swine flu tests, and a Hyderabad office will remain closed for two full days.

Facebook’s scoring some big gains in the world’s second- and fifth-most populous countries.  New stats indicate that the social network’s growth rate has started imitating the upright angle of a hockey stick in both India and Brazil.

Here’s an interesting fact for you: India is the world’s second-largest country in terms of population.  And here’s one more detail: by unveiling Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu interfaces, Facebook has put itself in a good position to pursue India’s citizens. 

After a long period of focusing on American content, it looks like Hulu’s going global.  One fresh deal has netted the site shows from the UK, while another partnership will result in the sharing of Bollywood films.  Plus, movement in the opposite direction – Hulu allowing access overseas – is being discussed.

India’s 15th general election is fast approaching, and Google’s determined to help anyone wanting to either participate in or monitor the event.  The search giant launched the Google India Elections Centre in both English and Hindi to facilitate the spread of information.

Google India has introduced a Firefox extension in Google Labs called Google Noticeboard, which is designed to help people access and share info over the Internet via public digital noticeboards.

The application is aimed at communities with access to shared computers. They can use the noticeboards to exchange messages related to community announcements, social interactions, etc.

Messages on noticeboards are publicly accessible. They can consist of text, or can be voice-based.

comScore released a couple of interesting reports today. The first involves the social networking landscape in Europe. According to comScore, France in particular had a big year when it comes to social networking, growing by 45% with Facebook as the leading network.

Today, Google launched an initiative called the Internet Bus Project, designed to show off  all the Internet has to offer to cities in Tamil Nadu, India. The purpose is to introduce people that are not familiar with the Internet to the education, information, communication, and entertainment it has to offer.

MySpace users in India have been offered the chance to watch new movies before they premeire in the country. The program is called MySpace’s Black Curtain Screenings.

Reports have been surfacing since last night’s election that while overall, India seems to have embraced the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States, there have been some worries among the country’s people due to Obama’s position on outsourcing.

Google sites received the majority of searches conducted in India according to a study of the online search market from comScore.

Google sites in India had more than 1 billion searches conducted in June, representing 81 percent of the market. Yahoo sites ranked a distant second with 117 million searches accounting for 9.4 percent. Ask Network landed in the third spot with 24 million searches representing 1.9 percent of the market.

The Wired Blog Network, revealed the mystery behind the Google defamation law suit in India.