Business Standard

Sundar Pichai's eight steps to Net a billion Indians

Project loon, lite-products for 2G internet, internet on bike for rural India, Railwire are some of the products Google plans to bring to India

Google, Sundar Pichai, Arun Jaitley, India

Delhi: Google CEO Sundar Pichai greets Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at his office in Parliament in New Delhi. Photo: PTI

BS Reporter Bangalore
A large section of India lives in villages and doesn’t even have access to Internet, but Google Chief Executive Officer

Sundar Pichai wants to get a billion Indians online. Here’s what he said in New Delhi on Wednesday:

  1. BETTER PERFORMANCE AT LOW SPEED: Google products will perform better on slow internet services, including 2G cell phone connections; web pages will load faster, leading to 50 per cent traffic hike
     
  2. SMART MAPS: Google Maps allowing real-time navigation and searches without a data connection
     
  3. OFFLINE YOUTUBE: Now, one can watch videos online without an Internet connection, and a new feature from next year will buffer paused videos faster
     
  4. RAILWIRE: Project to provide free WiFi at 100 stations by next year, connecting 10 million people passing through
     
  5. PROJECT LOON: Balloons in the stratosphere to provide Internet connections in the villages
     
  6. INTERNET BIKES: Google will work with Tata Trusts to provide Internet bikes in over 300,000 villages in three years. It has already started the project in 1,000
     
  7. TRAINING PLAN: Will train 2 million  Android developers over the next 3 years, with 30 universities in partnership with the National Skill Development Corporation
     
  8. CHROMEBIT: A device to turn a monitor into a computer. To be available in India from Jan, likely to boost computer use in education

 


Don't miss the most important news and views of the day. Get them on our Telegram channel

First Published: Dec 17 2015 | 12:56 AM IST

Explore News