Google's first global virtual visiting card-like feature launched in India

Tech giant Google has launched its virtual visiting card feature called 'People Cards' in India. Now Google search results of a person will throw up links to their personal websites, contact details and social media profiles.

People Cards is aimed at helping individuals, influencers, job seekers and freelancers who want to be discovered and expand their reach on the search engine.

"Google has launched the feature in India to aid business owners and sole proprietors who are looking to build their online presence amid the Covid-19 outbreak and also because the region's affinity to search their own names," said Lauren Clark, product manager for Search at Google during a virtual event. "The profile's photo, profession and location displayed will help the searcher differentiate individuals with the same name," she said.

In order to create a card, one has to sign into their Google account, search for their name or “add me to Search” and tap the pop-up box that appears. To start building your people card, people can choose to include the image from their respective Google account, add a description of themselves, links to their website or social profiles and even add a phone number or an email address.

India has become the testing ground for products and features of global technology companies. Last month, Instagram started testing its short-video feature 'Reels' to fill the void created by Chinese apps TikTok, one of the apps banned by the government over national security issues. Even Google's Bolo, a language learning app for children, was launched only in India before a global rollout in more than 180 countries and rechristened as 'Read Along' in 9 different countries.

The feature will appear only on mobile-based searches in the current phase and will be authenticated with the user’s mobile number. The user will have complete control of the information that gets displayed on the card and can opt-out of the feature anytime, which will stop their details from appearing in search.

To make sure there are no impersonators or fake profiles, Google said it has put protections and controls in place such as mechanisms to prevent abusive or offensive content and allowing only one people card per Google Account.