Google’s grand plan to target the ‘next billion’ internet users
Google has made no secret of its desire to target emerging markets and get more people using its services. And at its second “Google for India” event in New Delhi today, the internet giant unveiled myriad new products, programs, and updates as it looks to ramp up its efforts to get in front of “the next billion” internet users.
YouTube Go
First up, Google announced a new “offline first” YouTube app, which the company says has been in the works for the past year. Available only in India initially, YouTube Go is now open for registrations, though it’s not quite ready for prime time.
YouTube Go has been built from the ground up to work where there is poor connectivity or none at all, with users able to choose their resolution when saving or streaming videos — basically, if they’re on a slow connection, they can elect a lower resolution that will speed things up and consume less data.
Elsewhere, the app also lets you preview a video by tapping on the thumbnail, meaning you don’t have to play the video just to get an idea of what it’s about. But perhaps one of the coolest new features of the app is the ability to share videos with nearby friends without consuming any data.
Yes, Google is truly embracing offline mode by letting people share videos while entirely offline, though, of course, the other person must also have the YouTube Go app installed.
But, as an internet company, Google naturally wants people to go online. And this is why it announced a new initiative to try to get more public places to offer free Wi-Fi to passers-by.
Google Station
Last year, Google promised to bring Wi-Fi to hundreds of train stations across India, an initiative that kicked off in Central Mumbai in January. By April, that number had hit 10 stations, and today it’s sitting at more than 50 across the country.
With that in mind, Google is now launching Google Station to extend the program beyond railway stations and outside of India, with plans in place to partner with new venues, organizations, networks, and more to bring “fast, reliable Wi-Fi to the world.” Through the rollout, Google will provide “software and guidance on hardware” to create fast Wi-Fi zones, with a unified login easing users onto networks as they move around.
“We’re just getting started and are looking for a few strategic, forward-thinking partners to work with on this effort,” explained Caesar Sengupta, vice president for Google’s next billion users division, in a blog post.
Multilingual option and media compression
Google launched a new smart mobile messaging app, replete with the A.I.-powered voice-activated Google Assistant that answers questions. This hitherto English-only app will soon be bilingual, as Google revealed today that it will speak Hindi later this year.
Two additional updates were announced today, both aimed squarely at those on patchy connections. Google Chrome now automatically compresses MP4 videos, which Google claims will help save “up to” 67 percent of data, while the browser will also now optimize web pages when on slow networks, such as 2G. The new simplified pages strip out unnecessary content to present just the “essentials” from a given page.