Over the last year, we have noticed something important about improving our product in India .It makes them better for everyone around the world, India gives us early insights into the future said Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google) in economic times.India being a 2nd populous country with 1.3 billion people, is a huge target to tap for companies like Facebook and Google made for India.
There are around 300 million internet users and three people come online every second.Thus the growth of Internet is exponential in India. Sighting this potential Google made some big announcement on its 18th birthday in an event ‘Google for India’ held in Delhi .These are the announcements
(1) Free wifi at public place with Google
To increase the Internet users, a company has decided to give internet access platform in public places .Last year Google launched an ambitious project ‘Railwire’ with Indian railway making 400 stations a wifi hub. Inspiring from this company has formed a new platform,‘Google station’ which will be providing wifi hotspots in public places with the help of universities, cafes, malls, bus stop etc.
(2) ‘Allo’ Google’s new messaging app
‘Allo’ is a new messaging app created by Google. People are also calling it as Google’s whats app rival. It also has google assistant built in it.
(3) Google Assistant “Ab hindimeinkarengebaat”
Search engine Google is now training its AI-powered Google Assistant to speak in Hindi, which is our national language and spoken by a huge population. Google Assistant is used in ‘Allo’ , which means the ‘smart replies’ by allo will now be in Hindi.
(4) India stands next to the US in usage of Duo
It is a simple video calling service created by Google to run against Facetime and Skype. Its knock-knock feature notifies you on your phone and allows you to see live video of your caller before you answer(helping you to understand the caller’s mood!).
(5) Youtube Go
Youtube Go is designed with four concepts in mind- Reliability, Connectivity, Cost, and Sociability. This app is developed keeping Indian people in mind. The majority population in India still uses 2g. It allows users to save video for offline viewing, giving options over quality and file size. Also, allow sharing with local users. This app will be rolling out early next year.
(6) Chrome saves more data now
Chrome has added some new features in its new app, which will lead to reducing the data usage. Web pages would be optimized, showing basic info only. It could now reduce the data consumption up to 70%.
(7) Youtube Accelerator to be launched soon
This service offers quick buffering speed for videos. It uses local caching and https so that the user can watch video smoothly. The idea here is to distribute the load on shared wifi network in an efficient way, storing and caching them locally on a hotspot. If a video has 100000 supporters it would buffer more quickly.This project has already started in the Philippines. Soon to be launched in India.
(8) 2g optimized Play Store
The majority of our population still relies on 2g network. Google is providing a new version of Play Store that is optimized to work with 2g connectivity. Thus, giving a better user experience. Users now will be able to schedule app downloads and also get ‘wait for wifi’ option.
(9)Google made for India- News lite
People on 2g connectivity will now get faster news updates with this new service. This feature will only show headlines and relevant pics. Thus, cutting the whole article and faster loading.
All these announcements are India specific but as Pichai said: “India gives early insights into the future”. To explore such new insights in technology keep visiting us. (Google Made For India)
