- Google recently organized the seventh edition of the “Google for India” event on 18th November.
- This event saw the announcement of a set of new products and services catering specifically to the Indian market.
- These services will focus on a number of fields such as healthcare, education, and climate and will aim to establish the country further in the digital space.
Google hosted the seventh edition of its “Google for India” event on 18th November. In this edition, the tech giant has come to the stage with a greater emphasis on products and services which cater specifically to India and its netizens.
India with its humongous population represents one of the world’s largest consumers of digital media and Internet services. Hence, it’s not a surprising move on behalf of the company which pledged to make the internet safer for a billion Indians and also in due process empower the country to become a leading digital economy.
During the widely popularised event this Wednesday, the company laid down the roadmap for its revolutionary plans in India and made some major announcements.
A hand in hand effort to combat climate change
Recently, India’s Prime Minister Modi announced in Glasgow that the country will attempt to reduce projected carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes between 2021 and 2030. In an effort to fulfill the same promise to the Indian citizen’s Google is working on a range of climate-related efforts in India.
Google has partnered with the India Meteorological Department to launch customized weather alerts for a range of extreme climatic conditions. India at the apex of the subcontinent gets affected by a number of natural calamities such as heavy rainfall leading to floods in different parts of the country. Also, heatwaves, cold waves, or thunderstorms are common. Hence, these alerts will be quite useful and will be available on Android phones as well as Google Search.
Google is revamping its Google Assistant AI as well with this respect. Users can also use voice commands to get spoken weather alerts. Google has sent about 110 million notifications to 20 million affected people during a range of natural disasters.
Another effort by the firm to improve climatic conditions is the partnership with the Central Pollution Control Board. Now users will receive the latest Air Quality Index information from their nearest station.
Good news for students and academicians
In the field of education, Google is working to develop the digital education and learning space in the country. With the advent of the pandemic, digital learning has become indispensable and the firm has understood.
Google has partnered with Coursera to deliver new courses for students to enhance their careers. These include advanced courses such as IT management, data analytics, UX design, and others. The Google Coursera will be priced moderately and the company will also award 1,00,000 scholarships.
Google will connect students to job opportunities through a consortium of companies. Through its Google Classroom program, it will allow users to download class work whenever they have internet access. The company is bringing free learning content such as the practice problem features as well. The better availability of offline features will make learning accessible to areas with poor internet connectivity. The search giant says it wants to play the role of a catalyst as the country is looking to grow in the digital space.
A leap in public health for the nation
Google’s also looking to improve the healthcare facilities and make its resources available to every sector of the Indian population. The Google Assistant AI will now support confirming vaccination appointments. This feature will also allow people to easily book vaccination slots in their own native language.
In its event, Google also announced its venture known as the Mitra program in partnership with Armaan. It is aimed at benefiting pregnant women who very often lack access to basic healthcare and thus are prone to the risk of abortion and stillbirths. The non-profit organization, Armaan, will play its part and help such women get into the program and save their lives, especially during pregnancy
A brand new set of language upgrades to AI
Google also came in with a massive upgrade to their pre-existing AI features.
Google had launched its Look to Speak app last year. It will now support five more Indian languages. The Google Read Aloud feature will read aloud search results not only in English but also in the user’s native language. The feature will work with Hindi for now, says the company, and will soon progress to expand to bring more languages under its umbrella soon.
A new look to old favorites
Ambarish Kenghe, Vice President for Google Pay, announced some exciting updates to the payment app, declaring that the app will focus on making digital payments more accessible. The company is bringing new features for payments such as Groups and Bill Split. The payment app will also be available in the Hinglish language to its users. Google Pay enhanced its speech-to-text features as well and will now let users speak out the bank account number, instead of typing it when transferring money to one. Another major update is the addition of the My Shop feature where a small store merchant can showcase their entire inventory of products from the app.
