Key announcements at Google for India 2018 event

At the annual event Google For India 2018, company made new announcements for its growth in the Indian Market. One of the major announcement was rebranding Tez as Google Pay. Apart from it, Google made several new updates on Google Assistant, Google Search, Android Go, Google Go, Google Maps, Google Station, and more.

Google Assistant:

Google mentioned that Google Assistant has a growth rate of 3X in comparison to the last year. And to make this more fruitful they’re introducing Google Assistant in Marathi. They also announced to bring Google Assistant in seven regional Indian languages very soon.  Users can also switch between Hindi and English while using Google Assistant and this also applicable on Google Home too.

Google Search:

Google stated that the users of Google search have been increased by 2X in India. So to offer a good result, Google is adding more languages to the Google Search. It will also be available in Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil in a few weeks. There will also be more Indian sources in the search results.

Google Maps:

Google mentioned that Maps Go is now getting turn-by-turn directions. Also, the new app’s home screen will now have new shortcuts. Maps will now get a voice guidance in both English and Hindi. Adding facts, Google stated that the two-wheeler mode in Maps is used by 20 million people in India every month. Google Maps has also added over 50 million buildings have been in 2018.

Google Go:

Google also made a statement for Google Go app in which they promise to bring a new Google Feed soon. Soon, it will be able to read out articles in regional languages by highlighting each word in real-time. Users will also be able to adjust the speed as per their convenient.

Google Station:

Google is also partnering with Andhra Pradesh State FiberNet Limited to bring Google Station. Creating more public Wi-Fi hotspots made by turning fiber networks to Wi-Fi to over 12 thousand villages, towns, and cities across the state as a part of its Next Billion Users initiative.

Android Go:

They introduced the new Android Go with the Samsung Galaxy J2 Core. They’re also working with more partners and manufacturers to bring around 400 Android Go phones by the end of the year.

Project Navlekha:

Google’s new initiative Project Navlekha is aimed to bring regional language content online. Google is working with over 100,000 offline publishers for this project. They planned to make it possible by using OCR to extract text from regional language PDFs. From there they can publish it online on branded domains in under 60 seconds. The main theme of this project as Google’s belief that regional language content will define the future of the Internet in India.

Source – Google India Blog