RAICHUR: You can’t google in Google. In what must surely the most delicious irony of modern times, the tiny village of Google, about 510 km north-east of Bangalore, doesn’t have internet connectivity.

This village on the banks of the river Krishna with 1,000 residents in Raichur district is far removed from the search engine company based in Mountain View, California. How you spell the name is left to you as there are no English boards anywhere. All the boards, including those of government offices, are in Kannada.

And, on all of them, the name sounds exactly like how Google is pronounced.

When the government tried to put up English boards, activists stopped them. “We asked officials what was the purpose of putting up boards in English. Would anyone from Cambridge University come here to read these boards” asks teacher and Kannada activist K P Yallayyanayaka.

“My grand-daughter told me that two boys have named a website after our village. I feel happy and proud,” says octogenarian landlord Basavarajappa Gouda Police Patil.