Official Google India Blog: September 2017

Transforming Indian businesses with Google Cloud

September 26, 2017

These are exciting times where the technology landscape is rapidly evolving and enabling businesses to leapfrog several growth cycles. Today, the Cloud is an essential platform that enterprises are using to get key customer insights, grow and scale profitably.

Google was born in the Cloud and with Google Cloud we offer businesses - Google quality computing, security, data analytics, and other business tools. Earlier this year, Google Cloud was named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms (CCP), which evaluates vendors based on their vision and ability to execute. And, some of the world’s most successful businesses - Airbus, Coca Cola, Colgate, Home Depot, HSBC and Philips, among others, are already running on Google Cloud.

Over the last year, a large number of Indian enterprises have chosen Google Cloud to grow their business. We are very excited by the growth of paid Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers in India, many of whom are leveraging our ML and AI capabilities.

Take for example, Hike Messenger, the first homegrown Indian messaging platform. It has gained more than 100 million registered users within four years and Hike users share over one billion messages each day and more than 40 billion messages a month. Today, Hike is expanding its business beyond messaging and has introduced several new offerings including Hike Wallet and Hike News. Hike was born in the cloud and as it began to expand beyond messaging, Hike determined that they needed to partner with an organisation that would enable their evolution, helping them focus on insights from their data via Analytics and applying intelligence via Machine Learning. Hike’s entire messaging application and network, as well as all front-end traffic, is running on Google Cloud. The migration, which took place earlier this year, was completed over a 90 day period. Since the migration to Google Cloud, Hike has seen a 25-30% reduction in latency, improving the overall user experience on their platform. Google Cloud is also allowing Hike to scale with efficiency and greatly reduce their go to market time and effort.

Similar to Hike, several large enterprises and emerging Indian businesses, such as Ashok Leyland, Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC), Dainik Bhaskar Corp, Dalmia Cement, DTDC, Delhivery.com, GoIbibo, Reliance Entertainment - Digital, Royal Enfield, Air Vistara,Tata Sky and Walnut, have chosen Google Cloud as their technology platform.

Working closely with partners

We know that our customers need flexible and responsive relationships with their technology providers. To enable this for our customers in India and across the world, we have made several investments in strengthening our cloud partnerships. Over the past few years, we have announced a number of global partners, including Accenture, Citrix, Deloitte, Intel, Intuit, Nutanix, Pivotal, PwC, RedHat and SAP, among many others, to help enterprises innovate faster, scale smarter, and stay secure.

I am equally excited with the growth in the local partner ecosystem in India. With an increasing number of partners already engaged on Google Cloud, including BluePi Happiest Minds,, Searce, Team Computers, Microland, MediaAgility, Shivaami, CloudCover and PowerUp Cloud, the India partner ecosystem for Google Cloud is growing at an incredible pace.

With the Google Cloud India region going live in Mumbai before the end of this year, enterprises in India will soon be able to take advantage of the high speeds, low latency and performance benefits uniquely offered by our Google Cloud Platform services. When live, the region will offer several services including including computing, big data, storage and networking.

Fostering an ecosystem of skilled cloud talent in India

As more and more companies are taking advantage of what cloud computing, data analytics and machine learning can do for their businesses, the gap between the knowledge needed to move to the cloud and the demand for such skills has grown enormously. To address this need, we’ve collaborated with Coursera, a leading global online education platform, to launch a series of on-demand Google Cloud Platform training offerings.

These courses range in skill levels from beginner to advanced and include topics like cloud fundamentals, operations, security, data analytics, and machine learning. Now with just one click anyone in India can get trained on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Powering Indian businesses with Google Cloud

At Google Cloud, our goal is to build the most open cloud for all businesses and make it easy for our partners and customers to build and run great software. We’re incredibly excited about the momentum we’re witnessing in India, and will continue to invest in building a rich and diverse cloud ecosystem here.

Posted By Rick Harshman, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Google Cloud

Introducing Tez, a mobile payments and commerce app from Google

September 18, 2017

With over 300 million smartphone users in India and rapidly improving connectivity, the internet is becoming a daily part of life for many Indians. That includes messaging friends and family, searching the web for information, reading news, watching music videos, or playing games. But when it comes to paying for things in the real world — vegetables, bus fares, the chaiwallah, splitting the bill at dinner or paying on delivery for something purchased online — those smartphones often go unused. Out instead comes… wads of paper. Indians love cash.

There is a reason for this: cash is easy to use and works everywhere. But cash is easy to lose, difficult to carry around and can be easily stolen. More critically, cash makes it hard for people to build a financial track record, and could result in exclusion from services like credit and insurance.

To make digital payments truly work for India, we need a product that can compete with cash. It needs to be simple, affordable, and work everywhere and for everyone. So today we are introducing a new mobile app from Google, Tez — a simple and secure way to pay for things, big and small, online and offline, in India. Tez is a payments and commerce app built for India on top of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) standard.

Tez enables you to:

Make cash-like payments with Cash Mode: One of the most powerful aspects of cash is that it enables you to pay others without exchanging sensitive personal information. Cash Mode enables just that by letting you pay another Tez user nearby without having to share personal details like your bank account or phone number. This is ideal for paying the auto-wallah or sabzi-wallah. Bring two phones near each other, hit pay or request, enter your UPI PIN and the payment goes instantly from one bank account to another. Cash Mode is built using our proprietary AQR (Audio QR) technology, which is similar to QR codes but more convenient and more secure. And unlike NFC, it works on almost any smartphone in India, whether Android or iOS.

Like a chat app. Easy, fun and phone number based: Tez uses your phone’s contact list so there’s no need to add people as beneficiaries or remember complicated bank numbers. This makes it easy and quick to transact with people you know. So sending money to your family across the country, paying your landlord, or splitting a bill with a friend is simple and fast. Further, your transaction history with each person or business is grouped together like a conversation — just as chat apps group your messages together. This experience feels natural and enables richer, more engaging interactions.

Pay, get offers and more. At offline and online businesses: Small businesses can also use Tez to accept payments directly into their savings or individual current accounts (subject to regulatory limits). But we wanted to do more to help Indian merchants unlock the potential of digital payments, so we are launching the Tez for Business program. Participating businesses will be able to interact with their customers in new ways, including securely accepting UPI payments on their mobile websites with just a few taps. These merchants will also get their own Business Channel in the Tez app itself, so users can interact and transact easily with them without needing to install multiple apps. From their customized Business Channel, merchants will be able to engage customers directly by sending smart reminders for recurring payments, sharing tailored offers, and more. Our launch partners, PVR Cinemas and redBus, will be joined by a number of other businesses like DishTV, Jet Airways and Domino’s in the coming weeks. And we’re working with our existing advertisers and online e-commerce platforms like Shopify and payment aggregators like Billdesk and PayU to bring hundreds of India’s online businesses to Tez. And today, we’re opening up the Tez for Business program so sign up here if you’re interested in learning more.

All the power of UPI & India’s most trusted banks: Tez works with all of the 55 banks on UPI. Our first-of-its-kind multiple payment service provider partnership with NPCI and four top banks in India — Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank today and soon with the State Bank of India — means you can use Tez to transact with other UPI apps like BHIM or even check out online using your Tez UPI ID. It doesn’t cost you anything to use Tez, and your money stays in your bank so you continue to earn interest. And best of all, because Tez works directly with your bank account, there's no need to top-up a wallet balance or pay fees to get money out.

Protected by the Tez Shield: Backed by Google’s expertise in security and machine learning, Tez Shield works 24/7 and uses multiple signals to help detect spam, fraud, prevent hacking, and to verify and protect the identity of every user. Your account is also safeguarded with security options including your phone security method such as passcode or fingerprint and a Google PIN code. And if you ever need help, our customer service team is available all day, every day by phone or chat support.

Made for India first: Tez works on the vast majority of India’s smartphones (with apps for both Android and iOS) and Android supports English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu with more coming soon.

But this is just the beginning. In the next few weeks and months we’ll be working with our partners to add even more ways to pay on Tez (e.g. credit cards and wallets) and more places to pay. And select phones from our manufacturer partners Lava, Micromax, Nokia Mobile, and Panasonic will come with Tez, making it even easier to get started.

Tez is available today on Google Play and the App Store, and we’re excited for you to try it. We hope you’ll like our fresh approach to digital payments and commerce and that Tez will help make your life a little bit easier. This is just one step in a long and important journey towards enabling a cashless India — a crucial component of a Digital India.

Posted by Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Next Billion Users Team

Making Google Translate better—and more magical—for seven Indian languages

September 13, 2017

As the novelist and physician Khaled Hosseini wrote “if culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, to all the rooms inside”. We agree—language is incredibly important, not only for understanding culture, but also for accessing information in general. That’s why over the past several months, we’ve been updating our products to work better for the many Indian language users coming online every day. In April, we launched several new features and updates, including neural machine translation for more languages, and just a few weeks ago we enabled voice input for additional eight Indian languages. Today, we’re bringing several updates to the Google Translate app, making it easier for speakers of Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu to translate when they’re on the go. Now, you can do offline translations and instant visual translation in seven more Indian languages, type a Translate query with your voice in eight more languages (the seven above and Malayalam), and use conversation mode in two more languages: Bengali and Tamil. All these features have been available in Hindi, and are now accessible for more languages on both Android and iOS*.

Offline Translation in seven more Indian languages

With Google Translate, you can easily turn your phone into a powerful translation tool––for studies, business, or travel. But whether you’re on a spotty connection in a remote area or just want to switch off data while you’re on the go, sometimes you’d like to translate a word or sentence even when you’re not connected to the internet. This rings particularly true for us here in India, where connectivity can be an issue. To help you translate in moments like this, we’ve already enabled Offline Translation in Hindi, and now we’re launching the feature for seven more Indian languages––something many Indian users have asked about.

If you’d like to do offline translations in say Kannada, you can download the Kannada language pack when you’re on WiFi. Then just open the Translate app, select Kannada on either side of the screen and then tap the download button. English is automatically embedded in all language packs, so you can start translating offline between English and your language straight away.

Instantly translate signs or menus with Word Lens––now in more Indian languages

With today’s update, we’re also launching instant visual translation for these seven Indian languages, so you can now translate signs or menus from English to Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu, in addition to Hindi. The Translate app already lets you use camera mode to snap a photo of English text and get a translation for it in these languages. Now, we’re taking it to the next level and letting you instantly translate text using your camera—so it’s way easier for speakers of local Indian languages to understand English street signs in the city, or decide what to order from a restaurant menu. Word Lens is powered by machine learning, using computer vision to distinguish between letters on an image.

To get started, open the Translate app, point your camera at an English sign or text, and you’ll see the translated text in your language overlaid on your screen. If you’re using Word Lens in a language for the first time, you might be prompted to download a translation file first, as Word Lens works offline.

Start a bilingual conversation in Bengali or Tamil (and Hindi)

Conversation mode is a feature that lets you have a bilingual conversation with someone, simply by talking to the Google Translate app. For instance, when you’re at a marketplace trying to snag a good deal on that shawl, Conversation Mode can help you converse with the locals. This already works for Hindi, and today we’re launching two additional languages: Bengali and Tamil. Simply tap the mic to start speaking in a selected language, then tap the mic again, and the Google Translate app will automatically recognize which of the two languages are being spoken, letting you have a fluid conversation—it’s like having an interpreter in your pocket!

Translate with your voice in nine Indian languages

Typing in Indian languages on a phone can be slow and cumbersome, in fact more people in India are using their voice to “type” a translation query than the keyboard. That’s why we’re excited to bring Voice Translation to more Indians––with the recent launch of voice input for eight additional languages, speakers of Hindi and now Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and Tamil can dictate their translation queries using their voice. For instance, if you’re on the go and would like to type with your voice in Urdu, open the Translate app, select Urdu on the left side of the screen, and tap the microphone to start talking.

We’re hoping these new features help further bring down language barriers and provide more Indians with the ability to access information around them. All features announced today are already available in Hindi on the Google Translate app, and have started to roll out in the additional Indian languages both on Android and iOS*. With these updates, the Google Translate app supports Offline Translation for 59 languages, Word Lens for 37, Voice Translation for 66, and conversation mode for 40 languages. Our goal is to bring these and other features to more and more languages, breaking down language barriers in India and countries around the world.

*Please note that Voice Translation for the eight additional Indian languages currently only works on Android, but we’re looking to roll it out on iOS soon

Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate

A New Way To Discover Up-And-Coming Creators

September 13, 2017

More great videos are uploaded to YouTube today than ever before. New formats are being created and new stars and artists are being born every moment. With more than 1,000 creators crossing the 1,000 subscriber threshold every single day worldwide, new talent is constantly emerging. This is true for India as well, just last year, we saw over 500 creators get over 100k subscribers. That’s at least 1 channel crossing this threshold every day. We want to celebrate these up-and-coming creators and help them build a bigger audience.

Starting today, we’ll highlight creators who are “On The Rise” in a new section of our Trending Tab in India. Each week, a different creator will be highlighted and featured for a full day on Trending with the following badge: Creator on the Rise.

Any Indian creator with over 1,000 subscribers is eligible to be featured. “On The Rise” creators will be highlighted based on a bunch of factors including but not limited to viewcount, watchtime, and subscriber growth and will roll out to more languages in future. Our team is also involved in the process to help select which eligible creators will be featured.

One creator will be highlighted each week; we’ll let them know when they are featured so they can share the moment with their fans, old and new! We hope this will help the world discover inspirational new creators.

Posted by Rajant Meshram, YouTube Online Partnerships Lead, Google Asia Pacific, recently watched "How you should take Leave for Ganpati festival | CafeMarathi"

Improving our privacy controls with a new Google Dashboard

September 11, 2017

Data helps improve our products, keep them safe, and—with your permission—tailor them to match your interests.

But those interests, and how you want them to shape your Google experience, are constantly changing. That’s why we build powerful, easy-to-use tools that enable you to adjust your privacy preferences, anytime. We’re constantly working to refine these tools based on your feedback. In 2016 alone, we asked 4,000+ people from more than 15 countries around the world to tell us how they feel about privacy and security. This kind of feedback helps us build thoughtful products that cater to your needs.

Today, we’re announcing a refresh of the Google Dashboard, one of the first places people visit to see the products they use and the data associated with them. It will launch everywhere beginning next week. We also have some updates on the trends we’re seeing across our existing privacy tools and controls.

Making it easier to use Google Dashboard

Google Dashboard launched in 2009 to give you a snapshot of the Google products you use, all in one place. You could review your Google activity in the last month, see how many emails, docs and photos you have, and get answers to questions about Gmail settings. Dashboard also offered quick access to select product settings and related help center articles.

But as we built new tools like My Account and My Activity, it became clear that we needed to better integrate Dashboard into our other privacy controls. It should always be easy for you to make meaningful decisions about your data—and we decided we could do better.

In the coming days, we’ll be rolling-out a brand new version of the Google Dashboard. Here’s how it looks:

The Google Dashboard before (left) and after (right) the update

We re-designed Dashboard from the ground up. The most important change was to improve usability on touchscreens, ensuring Dashboard works well on any device. We also worked to make it easier to see an overview of the Google products you use and your data in each of them. And we made the process for downloading data much easier.

Powerful privacy controls that work for you

You may not use them every day, but our privacy controls are there whenever you need them. And we’re happy to see that they’ve proven to be useful for many people, each with their own needs.

Last year, we launched My Activity to provide a single, private destination where you can see how you’ve used our services. More than 150 million people have used My Activity to track down that funny video they watched, remember the obscure search that pointed them to that fascinating news article, and much more. Of course, if you want to delete any of your items in My Activity, you can. You—and only you—can view and control the information in My Activity.

Our My Account launch in 2015 included the Privacy Checkup, a simple tool for controlling your data across Google and updating the personal information you share and make public. We’re pleased to report that the checkup has been popular: Tens of millions of Google users around the world have used it to help suit their privacy preferences. My Account has also proven popular with and valuable to our users, with hundreds of millions of visitors every year.

In 2011, we created “Takeout,” now known as “download your data,” to enable anyone to download a copy of their data or export their information out of Google. Since then, users have downloaded more than one exabyte of data, and today we see more than 1 million exports every month. You can already move your data directly to OneDrive and Dropbox, and we’ll soon add Box and other options as well.

In 2009, we launched our ads preferences manager, now called Ads Settings. This is a powerful dashboard where you can control how we tailor ads to you, across the web and on YouTube. The tool has more granular controls as well. For example, if you only want to see ads related to certain types of categories, like sports or entertainment, you can add those categories and remove others.

Building tools that help people understand the data stored with their Google Account and control their privacy is a constantly evolving effort. We’ll never stop working to refine and improve. To learn more about our commitment to protect your privacy, visit privacy.google.com.

Posted by Greg Fair, Product Manager

Feed your need to know

September 8, 2017

From looking up the results of last night’s cricket match to finding a late-night dhaba close by ––people from Delhi to Madurai have long turned to Google for answers, to learn about the world, and dig deeper on topics they’re passionate about. Today, we are announcing a new feed experience in the Google app for Android and iOS, making it easier than ever to discover, explore and stay connected to what matters to you—even when you don’t have a specific query in mind. This new experience will work for English and Hindi.

A smart feed that changes with you

Since introducing the feed in December, we’ve advanced our machine learning algorithms to better anticipate what’s interesting and important to you. You’ll see cards with things like sports highlights, top news, engaging videos, new music, stories to read and more. And now, your feed will not only be based on your interactions with Google, but also factor in what’s trending in your area and around the world.

As the world and your interests change, your feed will continue to grow and evolve along with you. You’ll notice that your feed will also reflect your interest level for various topics—for example, if you’re a photography enthusiast but just casually interested in fitness, your feed will show that. But if you see something that isn’t up your alley, unfollowing topics is easy too. Just tap on a given card in your feed or visit your Google app settings.

Follow your favorites

To help you keep up with exactly what you care about, you’ll now be able to follow topics, right from Search results. Look out for a new “Follow” button next to certain types of search results—including movies, sports teams, your favorite bands or music artists, famous people, and more. A quick tap of the the follow button and you’ll start getting updates and stories about that topic in your feed.

Broader context and deeper exploration

To provide information from diverse perspectives, news stories may have multiple viewpoints from a variety of sources, as well as other related information and articles. And when available, you’ll be able to fact check and see other relevant information to help get a more holistic understanding about the topics in your feed.

We’re also making it easier to dive deeper into any of the topics you see in your feed. At the top of every card, you’ll see a header that puts your interests front and center, letting you search that topic on Google with one tap.

Get more of the stuff you care about

With these updates to the feed, it’s easier than ever to stay in the know about exactly the things you care about and see more content to inform, inspire and entertain you. You’ll spend less time and energy trying to keep up with your interests and more time enjoying and cultivating them.

The new feed experience is available in the Google app for Android (including the Pixel Launcher) and iOS, launching today in India. Just open the Google app and scroll up to get started--whether you’re a pet-loving, Arundhati Roy-reading, cricket fanatic; a Bollywood dancer and burgeoning brewmaster; or anything in between, your feed should fit your fancy.

Posted by Shashi Thakur, VP, Engineering

India Blog

Transforming Indian businesses with Google Cloud

Introducing Tez, a mobile payments and commerce app from Google

Making Google Translate better—and more magical—for seven Indian languages

A New Way To Discover Up-And-Coming Creators

Improving our privacy controls with a new Google Dashboard

Feed your need to know

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