Google for India: Building India-first products and features
blog.google
blog.google
Copying this, almost all carriers are in various stages of decommissioning their 3G services and migrating to 4G countrywide. So, even in remote corners of the country, 4G is more widespread now but the speeds are not always 20-30Mbps across the country.
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD?location...
[0] http://www.livemint.com/Politics/AvHvyHVJIhR0Q629wkPS5M/Indi...
Smartphones are extremely important part of India's way of life as almost everything else is regulated to death. It is a ray of light for most poor people and you will find people who might not have a toilet but will own an android smartphone.
The plan you mention, is about 11% of the average salary in India.
Even though it's cheaper in absolute terms, it's still more expensive in relative terms.
I actually saw this mentioned in a recent UX talk by google: the salary differences end up making internet a lot more expensive for the locals in India, Indonesia, etc, to the point where some apps actually show how much they'd use (eg: Youtube shows the size of a video before downloading).
People still micro-manage they available data because of how expensive it feels to them.
I also imagine that many people riding two-wheelers in India are just driving dangerously.
This has to be the worst PR news from Google I have ever read. For one, taking credit for something they have not delivered. Anyone and everyone in India will tell you the whole thing has to do with Reliance Jio and not much to do with Google wifi at all. Though given the cost of spectrum in India it remains to be seen if the data plans remain cheap. They have already increased from 309 for 3 months to 459 for 3 months ie more than 48% increase (surprisingly plans are still cheap compared to the old plans).
Then it talks about Android Go, even though there is a full fledged release page. Tez already exists with it's own PR page.
So, the only two things are:
> The Google Assistant for the JioPhone
Even after reading twice I don't understand what is special about this other than the carrier branding.
> Two-wheeler mode in Google Maps comes to India first
This looks promising though with even bigger risk than the general maps. So kudos, I guess?
I don't read it in that statement. I read it as a factual representation of the current state of the internet in India. Why do you interpret this as "taking credit"?
> Cheaper data through carrier innovation and greater access to public WiFi such as Google Station makes the richness of the internet more accessible to Indians.
The accessibility of Internet has changed dramatically in the last year through "carrier innovation" called Jio. But Google Station has a very limited reach. In comparison Jio Hotspots have wider reach but gets no mention at all.
It is merely making the point that the country is an important market going forward.
> Cheaper data through carrier innovation and greater access to public WiFi such as Google Station makes the richness of the internet more accessible to Indians.
That's not the only issue. Operating this system isn't free. For now, no transaction fees are being levied but banks are eagerly awaiting the day that the RBI will allow them to. 1-2% of a txn might not seem like much, but it'd be a tough sell to consumers asking them to pay more when they could use cash instead.
About 1-2% charges, if they ever start using it, wouldn't it still be better than credit cards? Most merchants don't charge extra for those (but some do even for credit cards).
That seemed like a joke to me, but apparently a paper check in the mail was the only universally accepted interface for inter-bank transactions.
[0] https://india.googleblog.com/2017/11/meet-datally-new-way-to...
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Looks like you're grasping straws here trying to find something negative so you can be upset about something.
Good luck.
Google has provided free wi-fi across various Indian railway stations which I am told carries more traffic than entire cellular 3G-4G traffic. India has 13000 trains running at any given time and carries over 8B passengers every year (legally).
Google has put a lot of efforts in providing Google services in over 10 different Indian languages. That is why my driver is able to use Google maps. He does not understand English. Google like many other tech giants has surely played an important role in making Indians use internet more and more.
The JioPhone is a feature phone, i.e. it doesn't run Android.
They explicitly said "cheaper data through carrier innovation"
> Even after reading twice I don't understand what is special about this other than the carrier branding.
You yourself said "everyone in India will tell you the whole thing has to do with Reliance Jio". So having Google Assistant for JioPhone is special in that context.
> This looks promising though with even bigger risk than the general maps
What's the risk you are seeing?
I do find it interesting, though, that "India-first" features are being praised by most here, while "America-first" features would probably be looked down upon by most here as well. What do you think causes the different reactions between the two?
A lot of users may prefer a locally-branded competitor because they feel it is properly tailored to their needs and culture. (I've specifically heard Yandex understands the interests and needs of Russian-speaking users better than Google, which is not a shock.) Presumably, specifying "India-first" is intended to convey that these apps are developed specifically for Indian users and their needs.
Oh, I understand this completely. It makes perfect sense for Google to focus on an emerging market to become a monopoly there, and I feel it's a fantastic strategy.
What I'm more curious about is why an Indian-first focus is met with fanfare and acceptance, while an American-first focus is met with derision and contempt against something anti-globalist, and that these two opinions often come from the same group of people. I just find it an interesting dichotomy.
The language is preloaded with a lot of existing conceptions about the state of the world currently, and the sort of people who use each set of terms.
Can you show any examples of this happening? I've never seen this here.
Sigh. Why do they pollute/confuse their existing products/projects? Go (Lang) was already difficult enough to search for on Google.
I called my mom on Google Go. Probably not Golang, 99.9999999% of the time
Why do brands reuse naming schemes for new projects? If you can do the best, integrate and adrertise, isn’t it better to drop pr weight and start over with completely new names?
Add to that the insane scale of AliBaba (with AliExpress) and WeChat who together process over a trillion dollars yearly. India and South-East Asia have an insane number of people.
Not to beat a yet-alive horse, I'd love to see bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) proponents tell the world how they are going to deal with that.
The price of cryptocurrencies are a function of supply and demand. A very large number of people wanting to get bitcoins combined with a limited number of bitcoins means the price would go up.
hardware is cheap, why would crypto scaling be an issue?
Because the algorithms governing crypto may not be scalable.
Case in point: a simple game of CryptoKittens basically crippled Ethereum:
- Etherscan has reported a sixfold increase in pending transactions on Ethereum since the game's release, by the Axiom Zen innovation studio, on 28 November
- CryptoKitties has become so popular that it's taking up a significant amount of available space for transactions on the Ethereum platform
- the CryptoKitties game accounts for over 10% of network traffic on Ethereum. As traffic increases, transactions become more expensive to execute quickly.
All this for a number of transactions that wouldn't even register on the radar of ... well ... any of the "more traditional" paying systems (including the pay apps like Tez, AliPay, WeChat etc.)