Google launches service to take internet to India malls, cafes

SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Internet giant Google announced Tuesday it launched Google Station in India, a service that aims to deepen its reach across the country, as the search giant seeks to bring more people on to its Google platform.

Under the service, Google will roll-out Wi-Fi hot spots in places frequented by a large number of people, such as malls and transit stations, and in social hangout locations such as cafes and universities, the company said on Tuesday.

“The goal is to give people many hot spots within a few minutes walk from their home, university, or workplace, unified by a simple login process that works across all of them,” Caesar Sengupta, Vice-President, Next Billion Users at Google was quoted as saying in the statement.

Google currently offers free Wi-Fi access at 53 railway stations across India and plans to scale up the service to 100 by year-end, the company said. Sengupta also said the company is also looking at monetizing the service it offers at railway stations.

Google Station will also be launched in Indonesia and Philippines in future, the company said.

"With Google Station, we aim to bring fast, affordable Wi-Fi to millions of people" – Caesar Sengupta at #GoogleForIndia pic.twitter.com/ElBvJoqFip

— Google India (@GoogleIndia) September 27, 2016

Google’s Play Store is also seeing a refresh designed to take advantage of free WiFi points. A new feature will use WiFi connections to pre-load the parts of the storefront that are most popular with other users. The pre-load will allow those on 2G connections to browse for new applications with fewer waits. Once a user decides on an application, they’ll be able to choose to delay the download until they connect to WiFi.

In addition to data saving tactics, Google’s VP of search John Giannandrea said the company is dedicated to enabling broad language support across India, highlighting that 12 of Google Translate’s supported languages are Indic. But while Allo and its Google Assistant are already available in the country, the company’s helpful AI currently only communicates in English. That’ll change by the end of year, as support for Hindi — the most-spoken Indic language — will arrive in the coming months.