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'Google for India 21' is Representing Inclusiveness for the Digital Economy

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As per the knowledge of RedSeer, India's consumer digital economy, valued at $85-90 billion last year, is expected to grow to $800 billion by 2030. Online retail is expected to become the third-largest online retail business by scale. Furthermore, kiranas are predicted to generate revenues of around $1.5 trillion. Platforms that enable these kiranas digitally, cashless payments, and bookkeeping will fuel expansion, on top of startu[ps bringing a new wave of homegrown innovation.

Continually supporting India on its digital journey stands a tech giant, Google, which has launched many India-first efforts to make the internet more helpful and safe. This year, in its seventh edition of ‘Google for India 2021’, the tech giant announced a range of product features as well as partnerships in hopes of spreading these beneficiaries to the Indian masses.

The announcements highlight Google's growing focus on product innovations that will assist new Internet users in India in gaining easier access to information in Indian languages, creating more natural ways for local language speakers to interact with the internet, improving the Android experience, and attempting to assist India's small businesses.

Google Pay
Google Pay has been updated with a plethora of new features. Support for a new, India-specific language called Hinglish is the most significant of the new features. The 'Hinglish' language, a colloquial combination of Hindi and English, will be available as a language to utilize in the app in the coming days. Along with support for the new language, Google also revealed that the app will soon allow users to enter bank account details or enter the amount for an intended transaction using voice commands.

Google Pay will soon include the possibility for customers to share a bill between each other, in addition to these features. Users of the popular UPI payments software can already form groups, and soon they will be able to add a bill to it and split it among themselves.

the tech giant says, “at our seventh Google for India event, we're announcing many new major product and platform advancements as part of our commitment to make India's digital economy more inclusive”

MyShop, a new tool for Google Pay for Business, is a virtual store interface that allows small company owners to swiftly set up a digital storefront in the app by uploading photos or graphics, item prices, and descriptions.

Weather
Google has unveiled three essential features that will assist People in keeping up with weather information. For the first one the tech giant together with the Central Pollution Control Board announced up-to-date information on air quality to Google Search. People may just Google air quality to find out the current AQI in their area.

Next, it claimed to create Weather Alerts for extreme climatic conditions in collaboration with the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), which would appear in the ‘At-a-Glance’ portion of an Android phone's home screen as well as on Google Search. Users can also keep up with such information by using simple queries like ‘Weather near me’.

Google Search
Google's Search in India has been upgraded to encourage the use of the search engine in Indian languages. Meaning, it will now translate web pages into the users' preferred Indian language automatically based on the search query. Right from the search query, users can check the source language and, if necessary, return to the original website. The new function is accessible in five Indian languages: Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam, and it can be accessed using any mobile browser that supports Google Search.

Up next are the set of initiatives which the tech giant has announced in hopes to harbor digital skills among citizens.

Initiatives Nurturing Education and Profession
Google Classroom, the classroom tool for students and teachers, is now available offline. Students will be able to download content whenever they have internet access and work on it later as a result of this. Multiple image submissions as homework will now be permitted in the classroom.

The Practice Problem tool on Search will also allow parents and students to access practice content. The feature will provide themes from high school math, physics, and chemistry from Indian education providers such as Byju's.

As for the professionals Google has introduced new Career Certificates in IT Automation, Project Management, Data Analytics, and UX Design. These professional credentials, developed by Google, would be available through Coursera for Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000. Google would also provide one lakh students with scholarships for Google Career Certificates.

Next, the tech giant announced initiatives for the governmental or public welfare initiatives in hopes of enhancing these services for the benefit of citizens.

Initiatives Enhancing Public Services
Starting with a program that uses voice guidance in English and eight Indian languages to walk users through the process of making a vaccination appointment on the COWIN website. Google collaborated closely with COWIN to make this connection possible, allowing even the most inexperienced internet user to arrange a vaccine appointment. This feature will be accessible on Android in early 2022 and will be available in Chrome.

Followed by another Search feature announced by Pandu Nayak, Vice President, Search and Google Fellow, that will allow users to access web pages from other languages and view them in their preferred local language, addressing the challenge of making high-quality information available to local language users. This is due to a major issue with local language queries, there is insufficient local language content on a topic to provide high-quality results. When searching in a local language, if Google is unable to uncover web pages that provide information in that language, it will now look for high-quality content on pages that may be in other languages and translate it into the user's query language.

When a user taps the translated title and snippet in the search results, they can go to a page where the content has already been translated into their preferred language, or they can view it in the original language. This feature intends to close the information gap that local language users frequently face when searching for information on the internet.

A feature that allows consumers to hear search results out loud is also arriving in India, a world first, making it easier for users who like to consume information by listening. This functionality will be offered in Hinglish and five Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil, to develop voice-driven experiences in local languages. It will also be extended to additional Google Search experiences in the future.

In conclusion, the tech giant says, “at our seventh Google for India event, we're announcing many new major product and platform advancements as part of our commitment to make India's digital economy more inclusive”.

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