Google Searches for New Users in India
28 September 2016 - 12:19AM
Dow Jones News
By Newley Purnell
NEW DELHI -- Alphabet Inc.'s Google is expanding its efforts to
connect with millions of Indians, using free Wi-Fi and tailor-made
products, as it seeks to harness the country's growing online
population.
Executives at a conference in New Delhi Tuesday unveiled the new
products and initiatives which are aimed at attracting new users
who are watching their data costs. Many Indians can't afford
monthly data plans and only buy mobile access in small chunks.
The company said it is set to launch a new version of its
YouTube app, YouTube Go, that it says works even with the slowest
internet connections and allows users to share videos between
devices. Many people in India exchange digital content using
gadgets like thumb drives to avoid downloads that incur mobile data
charges.
Google will also add a feature to its Chrome mobile web browser
that allows users to download pages for offline viewing, while
customers of the Google Play Store will be able to choose to
download apps only when connected to Wi-Fi, saving on mobile data
costs.
The new YouTube app will be available first in India and could
be rolled out in other countries later, while the Chrome and Play
Store features will be available soon in India and other
markets.
Many people in India connect to the web via low-cost smartphones
over patchy web connections.
"This is where new users are going to come from and their needs
are different," Caesar Sengupta, a Google vice president of product
management, said in an interview.
"India is all about mobile," said Rajan Anandan, Google's vice
president and managing director for Southeast Asia and India.
The Mountain View, Calif. company last year said it was
launching a free Wi-Fi project in a partnership with the Indian
government. Google says it is now available in 53 railway stations
in India and that 3.5 million users use the service every
month.
Google is confident that it can reach its goal of expanding the
program to 100 stations by the end of the year, Mr. Sengupta said.
Surveys found some 15,000 people in India every day get online for
the first time via the railway Wi-Fi project, he said.
Mr. Sengupta said Google is broadening its Wi-Fi effort with a
new initiative called Google Station. The company will provide
software so that owners of establishments like cafes and shopping
malls can provide their own Wi-Fi access and charge users for it,
if they wish.
Google is eager to lure new users in fast-growing emerging
markets like India so that it can tap into advertising revenues in
those countries, according to analysts. Consultant McKinsey &
Co. reckons some one billion people in India still lack Web
access.
Many of the Indians who do have internet access don't have much
money to spend, presenting a challenge for tech firms. The
country's gross domestic product per capita is about $1,500,
according to the World Bank, compared with about $8,000 in China
and $56,000 in the U.S.
Google is effectively shut out of China, having ceased most
operations there in 2010 after disagreements with the government
about censorship, meaning India is a key battleground.
Google is one of several U.S. technology firms looking to tap
India. Ride sharing startup Uber Technologies Inc., which last
month abandoned its costly battle for China's riders by swapping
its local operations there for a minority stake in the country's
homegrown champion, Didi Chuxing Technology Co., has said it is
hiring more engineers in India and improving its mapping
capabilities in India.
India is Facebook Inc.'s second largest market outside of the
U.S., while e-commerce titan Amazon.com Inc. said in June that it
would invest $3 billion in India to add to the $2 billion it said
it was pouring into the country in 2014.
Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell @wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 27, 2016 10:04 ET (14:04 GMT)
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