A Vietnamese engineer has succeeded in persuading Google to add his mother tongue to the languages supported by a keyboard app for the world’s most popular mobile operation system.

Nguyen Dang Viet Anh, a Vietnamese employee at Google, worked hard to get the Internet giant’s approval to develop Vietnamese keyboard for Gboard, a multi-language keyboard app developed by Google for Android devices.

Despite his success at Silicon Valley, he is determined to come back to Vietnam in the future.

From a personal cause

It all began when Anh, who started working for the Silicon Valley-based company in 2011, noticed his parents struggling with typing Vietnamese on their Android phones as this mobile operating system did not support a Vietnamese keyboard.

Instead, users were required to download, install, and set up an extension by themselves which can be quite challenging for the ones not good with technology.

Hence, Anh directly contacted Google’s deputy managing director so as to have the company focus more on Vietnamese users, beginning with adding Vietnamese to their Gboard app.

At first, he received many objections claiming the direction is not feasible and unprofitable.

However, being determined and strongly motivated, the 30-year-old engineer hailing from Hanoi kept on persuading the board until they agreed.

“Because I was having a clear motivation, I worked with 120 percent efficiency without getting tired,” Anh told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Within one and a half years, along with Nguyen Tuan Anh, his Vietnamese colleague at Google, Viet Anh successfully developed a Vietnamese keyboard compatible with the Gboard app for Android.

“Now my parents can easily type Vietnamese and can even activate voice typing in the language,” Anh said.

Recruited by the big three

“Viet Anh represents a generation that every country wants to have,” Professor Stephen Intille, who taught Viet Anh at college, said.

After graduating from Amsterdam High School for the Gifted in Hanoi, Nguyen Dang Viet Anh was admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a full scholarship of US$200,000.

In 2011 he graduated with a Master’s degree in Computer Science and was accepted by the big three of Silicon Valley including Facebook, Microsoft, and Google.

He chose to work at Google, joining the tech giant’s Experience (UX) unit.

As UX is a new concept for Vietnamese people, the young engineer has been trying his best to inform, educate, and familiarize Vietnamese youth with both the importance and essence of this field in each tech company through his own website uxlagi.com.

Working at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley also allowed Viet Anh the opportunity to directly present his ideas and self-developed projects to the world’s top tech bosses, including Bill Gates and Larry Page.

“I always want to live for the fullest for my country and that is why I am going to come back home,” he said.

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