Unlike last week's global announcements, Google's recent India initiatives are pitched at the aam janatha, aiming to touch those with poor Internet access:
YouTube Go, is a new for-India-only mobile app to load and play YouTube videos smoothly even with cheaper phones and poor Net access. It also offers a new feature that lets users share videos with friends and family nearby, without using any data.
After working with Indian Railways to provide Wi-Fi at 400 railway stations, Google has now launched Google Station which helps service providers rollout fast, reliable and safe Wi-Fi zones.
The recently launched messaging app Allo includes a preview edition of the chat-based Google Assistant. Later in the year, will be available in Hindi. You can respond quickly in English and Hinglish.
The Google Chrome browser now offers an expanded Data Saver mode, to reduce the amount of data the browser uses on Android devices, to 67% and to optimize pages and download twice as fast when slower, 2G-like networks are detected
The Android app Google News and Weather has added a new feature called “Lite mode” for people on low-bandwidth connections that keeps the headlines and trims the rest of the components down to essentials.
Some made-for-India technologies are working elsewhere too: For India, Google created Maps Offline — a way to download a map to your phone so you can navigate around town,even without a data connection. But now people around the world, especially in the US and Europe, are using the same offline maps technology.
—IndiaTechOnline
