Google for India: Google Feed becomes bilingual, Assistant now available in Marathi

The Google for India event that took place on 28 August in New Delhi, today announced various new technological developments and milestones in its ecosystem. This includes several projects such as Google Station, Google Maps, its payments app Google Tez now called as Google Pay, among others.[caption id="attachment_5062491" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Google for India. Google.[/caption]Google Station partners with Andhra PradeshGoogle has partnered with Andhra Pradesh State FibreNet Limited for its project Google Station to bring quality internet services to 12,000 villages, towns and cities in Andhra Pradesh.Google FeedA user's Google Feed mostly includes topics of interests to the user. It also includes news that may be of interest to a user. Initially, this feature was available only in English, but now Google is bringing this feature in Hindi as well. This will allow most people to read news articles in their vernacular.Additionally, it will help 1,00,000 Indian publishers to start their website and publish on branded domains via the Project Navlekha. As of now, this includes Hindi publications.Google GoFrom now on, those using the Google Go app can listen to any webpage in English, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, and Tamil wherein as the voice reads the page, each word lights up. Since the Google Go was introduced for areas which have low internet connections, this feature will be available even at 2G network.Google AssistantGoogle's director of software engineering, Pravir Gupta announced that Google Assistant will be available in Marathi also, apart from Hindi and English. He announced the Google Assistant's integration with Where is My Train, Airtel, and Hello English. Google MapsSince this is the tenth year of Google Maps in India, its vice president Gayathri Ranjan announced new features.Maps will now come equipped with voice guidance while travelling in public transport. It will also send alerts related to an upcoming stop or when to get off.Maps has also partnered with RedBus to provide intercity bus routes.Google Tez is now Google PayGoogle’s payments vice president Caeser Sengupta announced that the payments app in India has been rechristened to Google Pay. The change has come only in terms of the name, while rest of the features remain the same. It will expand the services to users for paying in stores and via online, for merchants, and to individuals in need of instant loans. He announced Google's partnership with banks such as Federal Bank, HDFC, Kotak, ICICI. Commenting upon the future of the internet in India Rajan Anand, Google, vice president of India and Southeast Asia, " Voice has been emerging as the preferred mode of use for new internet users. We’re seeing major growth of voice queries in India. Furthermore, online video now accounts for 75 percent of all mobile traffic. And as for vernacular, the majority of the Internet users today are Indian language users, a number expected to reach 500 million plus in the next two years. 95 percent of video consumption is in vernacular languages.”