The search giant Google’s Indian-born, IIT-Kharagpur educated Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai expressed his intention to enhance connectivity in India at his first visit to the country after getting the top job. Among the first things Google is planning to do is to go ahead with the plans to provide free WiFi connectivity at over 100 railway Stations across India. “We expect to have the first railway station, which will be Mumbai Central running by January.”
Speaking about how Google, which has a higher market share in India than in most countries, plans to train more people to use the internet Pichai and his top executives took to the stage in a New Delhi hotel to demonstrate some initiatives. Chief among them was Google’s move to support more Indian languages. According to the company, their online video platform YouTube now supports 11 Indian languages and their Android smartphone operating system now supports ten. Caeser Sengupta, Google’s Vice President for Product Development said that the latest version of Android called ‘Marshmallow’ added support for Gujarati and Urdu. Rajan Anandan, Googl India’s boss said that a vast majority of the Indians coming online now, with six million new smartphones added every month, will not use English as their primary language.
Google also showcased major improvements in their transliteration software that allows people to type Hindi messages using an English keyboard. The first enhancement allows people to be able to transliterate directly in their messaging and social media applications. The second improvement is a live translation tool that works with the camera to directly translate signs and text.
The search major is also working on making their software more efficient and able to work in India’s low-bandwidth environment. This includes making their software packages and allowing for offline access to key applications such as Maps and YouTube.