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Sundar Pichai's eight steps to Net a billion Indians

Project loon, lite-products for 2G internet, internet on bike for rural India, Railwire are some of the products Google plans to bring to India

Google, Sundar Pichai, Arun Jaitley, India

Delhi: Google CEO Sundar Pichai greets Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at his office in Parliament in New Delhi. Photo: PTI

BS Reporter Bangalore
A large section of India lives in villages and doesn’t even have access to Internet, but Google Chief Executive Officer

Sundar Pichai wants to get a billion Indians online. Here’s what he said in New Delhi on Wednesday:

  1. BETTER PERFORMANCE AT LOW SPEED: Google products will perform better on slow internet services, including 2G cell phone connections; web pages will load faster, leading to 50 per cent traffic hike
     
  2. SMART MAPS: Google Maps allowing real-time navigation and searches without a data connection
     
  3. OFFLINE YOUTUBE: Now, one can watch videos online without an Internet connection, and a new feature from next year will buffer paused videos faster
     
  4. RAILWIRE: Project to provide free WiFi at 100 stations by next year, connecting 10 million people passing through
     
  5. PROJECT LOON: Balloons in the stratosphere to provide Internet connections in the villages
     
  6. INTERNET BIKES: Google will work with Tata Trusts to provide Internet bikes in over 300,000 villages in three years. It has already started the project in 1,000
     
  7. TRAINING PLAN: Will train 2 million  Android developers over the next 3 years, with 30 universities in partnership with the National Skill Development Corporation
     
  8. CHROMEBIT: A device to turn a monitor into a computer. To be available in India from Jan, likely to boost computer use in education

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First Published: Dec 17 2015 | 12:56 AM IST

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