Google has accelerated the speed of technology change in India since its debut in 2004

 Google has accelerated the speed of technology change in India since its debut in 2004

30 Sep, New Delhi (IANS): In 2004, Google India had just five people. Since then, it has expanded to become one of the largest employment bases outside of the US.

Indians are among the most ardent Google users as smartphones have brought millions more people online. India ranks second only to the US in terms of total mobile 'Search' inquiries using services like Gmail, Translate, and Android.

The startup launched Search in English in 2003, but soon added Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, and many other languages.

Millions of connected Indians, reasonably priced smartphones and data, record levels of digital payments, the digitization of citizen services, and a thriving startup ecosystem have put the technology sector on track to overtake all other industries as a major driver of the Indian economy.

With this in mind, Google, through its $10 billion (about Rs 75,000 crore) India Digitization Fund that was launched in 2020, promoted technologies that were first in India, sought to remove access hurdles, and invested in strengthening the strategic pillars of India's digital economy.

The corporation is using a combination of equity investments, joint ventures, operational, infrastructure, and ecosystem investments to invest the money in the nation.

The pace of technical advancement in India has been phenomenal, and there are still a ton of opportunities, according to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google.

We are advancing the digital future of India. As part of our global effort to bring the entire globe's 1,000 most-spoken languages online and to enable people to access knowledge and information in whatever language they prefer, that includes the work we're doing to build a single, unified AI model that will be equipped with handling over 100 Indian languages across conversation and text. Pichai said this in December of last year.

In India, Google Pay has been operational for more than five years. In our safety engine, Google Pay uses cutting-edge techniques to examine the overall transaction patterns of millions of users and relate them to a graph with a billion nodes.

Additionally, the business added a helpful new function to Google Pay that makes accessing transaction history simpler than before.

To further simplify the customer onboarding process for Google Pay, Google worked with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in June to provide Aadhaar-based authentication for UPI activation.

According to Worldline's 'India Digital Payments Report for H1 2023', the surge in Person-to-Merchant (P2M) transactions helped the number of universal payments interface (UPI)-based engagements reach 9.3 billion in June 2023 from 151 million in January 2018.

PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm were the three UPI apps with the most volume and value of transactions. The three applications accounted for 95.68% of all transactions in June in terms of transaction volume, up from 94.55% a year earlier.

This month, the global technology leader introduced an earthquake warning system in India that enables Android smartphone users to flee to safety as soon as the earthquake strikes.

The technology uses sensors in Android smartphones to find and estimate earthquakes and was developed in collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the National Seismography Center (NSC) in India.

Small accelerometers that can also function as miniature seismometers are built into every Android smartphone. A phone that is plugged in and charged can spot earthquakes before they even start. Be Aware and Take Action are the two different warnings that Google will issue.

In August, Google expanded its generative AI search capabilities outside of the US for the first time, entering Japan and India.

In these regions, Google's Search Labs will offer the new AI-powered search tool known as SGE (Search Generative Experience), which will add a new feature targeted at making it simpler to access information in its AI-powered overviews.

Users in India can listen to the responses, which is a preferred feature, and locate a language toggle to assist multilingual speakers effortlessly move between Hindi and English. According to the internet giant, Search advertisements will continue to run in specific ad spots on every page in both nations.

Pichai revealed the company would establish its global financial operation center at GIFT City in Gujarat in June of this year.

Pichai stated that the corporation will keep making investments in India through its $10 billion digitisation fund after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US.

Pichai visited India in December of last year and expressed support for the country's G20 Presidency.