Google for India Event 2018 (held on Tuesday-28th August 30, 2018, in New Delhi, India) tacked together some products and services that were customized towards emerging markets like India to familiarize active users with recent Google activities and services; especially to those who are stuck with their low-end smartphones and unelaborated data-connectivity.
Google Tez is a digital payments app for India which is now renamed to Google Pay. The changes have just started rolling in, if you are upgrading it from a previous version. But this change will not affect your account, transactions and underlying terms and conditions. It is as well estimated that around 15000 retail stores are going to make use of Google Pay. Small businesses and shop merchants can now pay for Google Ads by making use of Google Pay.
With around 16 million monthly active users in India and over 2 lakh annual transactions, all the basic features remain same. It still enables all kinds of transactions like:
Devices who wish to upgrade to Android Pie Go have access to better security with increased storage. Around 400 devices with Android Go OS are expected to be launched by year-end. This will essentially include Lava, Micromax, Samsung, and Transsion.
Google has mentioned that Samsung Galaxy J2 Go is Samsung’s first Android Go phone. Additionally, Android Go now has 150 hardware partners and there will be around 400 Android Go smartphones by the end of 2018.
India is the fastest growing country on Google maps that has entered into a tie-up with Red Bus for Google Maps in 2018. Google Map users will also get informed about the ticket prices and around 20,000 routes across 1500 cities due to this partnership.
Google Maps Go now comes with navigation functionality, a home screen with shortcuts and public transport guidance to inform riders about upcoming stops and alerts.
Google Assistant now supports popular local apps and will soon start supporting local languages like Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil
Google is soon going to join state governments and launch its Wi-Fi services using Station. It will partner with Andhra Pradesh State Government (FiberNet – public Wi-Fi hotspots built by turning fiber networks to Wi-Fi) to make it reach 12 thousand remote villages, towns, hospitals and cities like Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada. These are currently available in over 400 stations across India.
This will help around 10,000 Indian publishers to print their content online, to easily start their website and publish a branded domain. It works by making use of OCR to extract text from regional language PDF’s and publish it online on branded domains within a minute’s time. Google believes that regional languages will uplift the content on the Internet in the coming future.
Google Go users can fetch any web page in English, Bengali, Hindi, Tamil or Malayalam and listen to it on the go. It will eventually be marked as read.
Voice searches on Google have increased to more than 200% in India. Google search is now more frequent and has experienced a steady 50% increase since last year. Google feed is now available in multiple languages like English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, and Telugu.
Google has planned to display definitions in both English and Hindi now, as one out of 35 searches is in Hindi in India.
Google has pledged $1 million to several NGO’s who are working towards flood relief and recovery in Kerala and subordinate regions.
To further unite Indian web and mobile users, Google tries to localize their ecosystem by introducing local languages to its giant search engine. Making some amendments to its existing services, Google tries to highlight how connectivity has increased (obviously as fast as population and demographics) and has, in turn, resulted in increasing the number of users. With around 500 million users hailing from India, around 400 are active monthly internet users and data usage has skyrocketed reaching almost 10 GB per month for an average internet user. These statistics are in line with the internet users in developed nations across the world. This comes with the introduction of local languages in Google search, the introduction of AI-based project Navlekha, voice search, ease of digital payments via Google pay, localized Google maps and Google Home in both English and Hindi.
Neeti Kotia is a technology journalist who seeks to analyze the advancements and developments in technology that affect our everyday lives. Her articles primarily focus upon the business, social, cultural, and entertainment side of the technology sector.
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