Google’s Desi Charter

Google organised a special event in Delhi on Wednesday (16 December) called “Google for India” where CEO Sundar Pichai and key-speakers laid out a number of steps that the company has taken to improve their products and services as well as measures to get more people on the country online.

Speaking at Wednesday’s “Google for India” event in Delhi, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and a team of Google product leads outlined the latest steps in the company’s strategy for bringing more Indians online and giving them a great experience when they get there. The announcements ranged from a January launch date for free Wi-Fi in Railtel stations to new training programs for two million new Android developers over the next three years that make it easier for Indian developers to build solutions to local problems.

Here is a quick summary of all the major announcements that were made today:

Deploying the Internet
Google says that more 3 billion people in the world are still offline and the company is putting in efforts to crunch the numbers under a new program called Access. Under this program, the company is working closely with the Indian Railways and Railtel to launch RailWire Wi-Fi which will be providing free Wi-Fi at train stations. Google is aiming at 100 busy train station across India out of which Mumbai Central will be the first and will be operational in January 2016. Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Programs-India said that the new Wi-Fi stations will offer speeds which will be much faster than the Government defined speeds of broadband (512Mbps) and will be offered free of cost for one hour. They are also working with sponsors so that this project is self-sustaining and want to make the internet free of cost for users. Google is also planning on getting Project Loon to the country where it provides free internet by using weather balloons. Marian Croak, Vice President of Access Strategy and Emerging Markets was quite confident and said that Google is already in talks with the Indian Government and should get a go as it has already managed to get the green light in about 50 countries.

Improved apps and services
To bring a better experience Google has already introduced lighter and less data consuming versions of its search results as well as webpages in Chrome. This leads to much faster loading times and increased traffic for publishers and is also quite useful for consumers who only have access to slower connections. Tamar Yehoshua, Vice-President of Product Management for Search, said, “We take the responsibility of connecting people with the information they need and recognize just how much this can make their lives better in big and small ways.” Google also showed-off its new virtual keyboard that lets users type in 11 Indian languages. For YouTube lovers, Google already announced launched an offline feature in India that let users watch videos without a connection and today an additional feature was announced that will let videos buffer while they are paused and will show the amount of data that would be consumed while buffering. For Maps, Google has rolled in Offline Maps where users can download maps on their devices and can navigate and search for locations without a data connection. Google has also added panoramic imagery of 250 Indian monuments to both the Google Cultural Institute and Google Maps.

The first quarter of 2016 will see Google releasing a feature called Tap to Translate that will let users instantly translate any text easily on their Android phones. According to Caesar Sengupta, Vice-President for Google’s Next Billion initiatives, “Our most active users in India translate between Hindi and English multiple times a day, spending lots of time copying messages from friends or colleagues, translating them, writing responses, translating their responses, and then pasting them back into an app. With Tap to Translate you can copy text anywhere on your Android phone and instantly get the translation, right then and there — without ever leaving the app. No more copy/paste, no more app switching, just instant translations.”

Solving problems with Android and Chrome OS
One of the biggest announcements made at the event today was a training program where Google seeks to train two million new Android developers. The company plans to work closely with more than 30 universities across the country over the next three years in partnership with the National Skill Development Corporation. It is a big step by the company and this program could lead on to make one of the biggest Android workforce in the coming future.

Google will also be launching its own PC on a stick device called the Chromebit in January 2016, which will turn a monitor into a computer running Chrome OS. The product which is made by Asus, will be targeting to boost computing in the education sector.