Google, during its ‘Google For India’ event, has made a slew of announcements. The company has introduced new Research centre in Bangalore, partners with BSNL for public WiFi in villages, introduced Vodafone Idea Phone Line powered by Google Assistant, new Indian languages for Assistant, Discover, Lens and Bolo. The company has also introduced Spot Platform on Google Play for merchants and the brand has also introduced new Job efforts focusing on entry-level jobs.
To start with, the company has introduced Google Research India, an AI lab, in Banglore. The team will be responsible for advancing fundamental computer science and AI research by partnering with the research community across the country. The team at the Research Centre will also apply its research in different fields including healthcare, agriculture, and education.
Google has also partnered with BSNL to bring high-speed public WiFi to rural India. The company has announced that it will add public WiFi to villages in Gujarat, Bihar and Maharashtra. Google has also partnered with Vodafone Idea to introduced a new Phone Line supported by Google Assistant. With this, Vodafone Idea customers can call a single number free of charge and get information about everything. The service is available in English and Hindi languages.
Google is also adding new Indian languages to Google Assistant, Discover, Google Lens and Bolo apps. The Discover, which is a news feed app, will get Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam languages. Oriya, Urdu and Punjabi will follow soon. In Google Lens, users will be able to ask questions and translate texts in Tamil, Telugu and Marathi.
Lastly, Bolo, a speech-based application, now comes with regional languages including Bangla, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The company will also introduce an interpreter mode in the Assistant on Android and Android Go smartphones in the coming months. This feature will help in translating from one language to another.
Google has also introduced a new Spot Platform, which will help merchants to create branded commercial experiences to bridge the offline and online worlds. The company claims that popular services like UrbanClap, Goibibo, MakeMyTrip, RedBus, Eat.Fit and Oven Story are already on board through our early access program.
The company has announced tokenized cards on Google Pay. This provides a secure way to pay for things using a digital token on your phone rather than the actual card number. Tokenized cards on Google Pay will be rolling out in the next few weeks with Visa cards for HDFC, Axis, Kotak and Standard Chartered banks. And we will roll out support to cover Mastercard and Rupay and more banks in the coming months.
In order to provide the right opportunities to people, the company has launched a new Jobs effort that focuses on entry-level jobs. The Jobs feature will be available as a Spot on Google Pay, which will help people to find jobs and prepare for an entry-level position. uses machine learning to recommend jobs and training content to help these users prepare for interviews and learn new skills. Jobs also makes it easy for them to apply, schedule interviews and engage directly with potential employers.
Google has partnered with the National Skill Development Corporation for this feature. The company has introduced Job Spot with 24 early partners in retail like 24Seven and Healthkart, delivery and logistics partners like Swiggy, Zomato and Dunzo and hospitality providers like Fabhotels.