Google first gave us maps. Recently it ushered in the spirit of April Fools Day with the new cutesy "8-bit Quest Maps" of Google's mapping tool. Notwithstanding that, the Internet search leader has added colour to the Indian landscape with its new avatar. This time, it has set out to map Indian museums in a geeky manner as part of the Google Art Project. This ambitious global initiative launched last year, plans to map 150 top art museums in Germany, US, Spain, the Czech Republic, UK, France, Netherlands, Russia and Italy.

As for India, its digital canvas captures two of Delhi's popular museums - National Gallery of Modern Art and the National Museum - with the click of a mouse. The Google Art Project exhibits 94 works of art from the National Gallery of Modern Art, and 142 pieces from the National Museum. It also includes master works like that of the legendary Raja Ravi Varma's oil paintings and Jamini Roy's artistic renderings.

As you hop on to this virtual tour, the search engine packs in a fun element, to an otherwise hi-tech project. This is how it works. The already tried-and-tested street view technology from Google Earth is used inside the virtual museum. This technology allows art aficionados to walk through the museum and soak in the beauty of art works, quite like the experience in an offline artistic journey.

Digitization has a dual purpose, it encourages people to develop a flair for art, as first time users can create their galleries and compile artworks of their choice with tools like Explore and Discover. Additional tools like zoom allow you to go into depths of various artists and create your own virtual art space, which is not possible in a brick and mortar museum. Who knows, somewhere between so many clicks, a sudden fondness for art can turn into lifelong love. Secondly, the existing art connoisseur can enjoy diverse eclectic painting styles in a single click.

The Google Art Project includes a video clip that gives a glimpse of the Behind-the-Scenes effort. Digital options allow users to appreciate the finer nuances of the artworks through a carefully selected collection of photographs approved by curators of partner museums. Those with a watchful eye can also check out video clips hosted on YouTube.

The thought of a self-effacing artist labouring away at a canvas is an emotional one. All that Google has done is to create a virtual tool to optimize on that psyche and offer it cleverly at the fractional cost of an Internet connection. It has painted a rosy picture probably unknown to the Indian art fraternity, after whetting the Indian market successfully with Google Maps.

Web information company Alexa that computes traffic rankings, indicates that Google Maps is the second most popular site in India and Spain, among others, while US takes the first place. Incidentally, Bangalore became India's first city when it got street level view on Google Maps last year. Almost every city has been on its radar.

If that's not enough, this year's Railway Budget announced that trains could get chug along safely by integrating real time GPS tracking system with Google Maps. This will be accessible through mobile devices and computers.

From time to time, Google has proved to have an ardent fan following in India. The Nielsen Informate Panel survey released earlier in the year, reported that Google's Android applications are the most popular in India. In February, top techies from various companies including Google made it to the list of 20 Indian technology greats who are influencing the technology business globally. The technology greats were listed in the special issue of Dataquest, the flagship technology journal of CyberMedia, the largest specialty media house in South Asia.