At Google, we believe information is fundamentally empowering. While all of our technologies demonstrate a commitment to this guiding principle, information is especially important when a society comes together to participate in democratic elections. Beginning ten days from today, more than 700 million eligible voters in India will over the course of four weeks have the opportunity to participate in the largest democratic event in human history — India's 15th general election.
Today, along with a wide range of partners, we are happy to announce the launch of the Google India Elections Centre - available in English and in Hindi.
People from across India can use the centre to do the following:
Posted by Rishi Jaitly, Senior Policy Analyst, and Sanjay Jain, Product Manager
Two important billing changes have come into effect for advertisers in India:- The minimum amount of a pre-payment has increased from INR 120 to INR 500.- The activation fee for creating a new account has increased from INR 60 to INR 250.Read on for more information about these changes:I. Minimum Prepayment AmountThe minimum pre-payment amount has increased from INR 120 to INR 500 for AdWords accounts with billing addresses in India and a selected currency of the Indian Rupee (INR). All cheque or demand draft payments must be at least INR 500, or we'll be unable to process the payment.If you make a net banking payment, you'll be unable to enter an amount less than INR 500 on your Make Payments page.We have increased the minimum pre-payment amount to alleviate the common problem of small payments being used up very quickly. This results in unwanted ad down-time until the advertiser can replenish his or her account balance. With a higher minimum pre-payment amount, advertisers will have to make pre-payments less frequently, which will help keep their ads running continuously. The increased minimum amount will be adjusted against the customer's total budgeted amount. See a list of frequently asked questions about prepay.II. Activation FeeAdvertisers creating a fresh AdWords account on the Indian Rupee (INR) will be charged an activation fee of INR 250 rather than the current activation fee of INR 60. The purpose of this increase is to bring the India activation fee in line with that of other countries.
Many schools and universities across the world have been going online to increase the efficiency of their day-to-day operations through Google Apps Education Edition. The increased adoption of schools moving to Apps has been particularly significant in India, especially as a result of our recent Got the "App"titude Challenge. This challenge encouraged students, faculty members, and alumni from engineering and management schools throughout India to move their institutions to Google Apps.
The challenge created quite a stir, and after launching in August, more than 6,000 teams signed up consisting of students, faculty, and alumni. Each team worked with their own IT staff to identify challenges and limitations with their existing email and collaboration systems, and then, working with a Googler, demonstrated the ways in which Google Apps could mitigate these issues. As a result of the challenge, more than 100 colleges across India are now in the process of implementing Apps on their campuses. Some of these schools include National Institute of Technology - Calicut, Zakir Husain College of Engineering & Technology- Aligarh Muslim University, and Jaypee Business School.
The performance of each team was evaluated by measuring product usage after their deployment. We'd like to extend our congratulations to the XL CONNECT team from Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) - Jamshedpur, who won the challenge by demonstrating the highest usage of Google Apps products. This team ran a pilot and implemented Google Apps within less than a month from the day they secured approval from their college's decision makers. They also conducted marketing campaigns to inspire students to find innovative ways to use Google Apps tools. Chintan Agarwal, secretary of the Systems Society at XLRI says, "Considering the need for a networked manager and the high reliability and usability of Google Apps, we have rolled-out Apps services for all XLers, including international students at Singapore and Dubai."Below is a map of all the schools across India who will be rolling out Apps on campus after participating in the challenge. We look forward to continuing to fill up the map as more schools across the globe get the "App"titude.
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