Maybe, because the average Indian user has nothing to do with the programming language. However, s/he understands the word Go even if s/he is illiterate?
I don't think so. I frequently search for golang related issues, but even then when I search for 'Google go', the golang website is on number 6 and has no other mention on the first page at all. It is the programming language which suffers from poor discover ability. For an average non programming indian, golang might not feature on the first page at all.
that kinda issue disappeared a couple of years ago when google started delivering targeted search results. an average user searching for google go will get google's product before any mention of the go language
try it yourself, search for things you'd normally search for using an incognito unsigned into tab and you'll get wildly different search results than what you're used to as a developer/designer
Are you expecting no developers who reside in India who use Google's Go apps to ever also develop apps using Google's Go language? Can you imagine how difficult it will be for Google Go Search to decide which intent that person had when they search for a Go related topic?
Google basically needs to name their apps starting with G or they will be hard to find in a sorted list; is it titled Google Xylophone or just Xylophone? Maybe I'll just use Marimba, I can always remember how to find that. When everything starts with G, it's easy to find.
> And Indians are using more data than ever before—4GB on average every month, projected to grow to 11GB per month in the next four years. 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.
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?
> For one, taking credit for something they have not delivered.
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.
They haven't structured the sentence well. They are taking credit only for their WiFi networks.
Besides Google is not a carrier and hence they can't logically take credit while talking about carrier innovation.
> 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.
I can't say about the other stuff but tez is surprisingly awesome. Tez + UPI + Adhaar just blows away everything I've seen. This has potential to cut out the cc middlemen completely.
I' have to agree. UPI (Tez/BHIM etc.) is so awesome and a pleasure to use, I don't even like credit card payments anymore. Wonder why the USA doesn't have anything like that.
I'm curious, have you never seen failures happen? I've seen it happen a few times - a payment to a merchant times out and they don't receive it till days later. By then you've already paid twice and its difficult to recover the money. This isn't a problem with credit cards where you can simply issue a charge-back. Until UPI has a grievance redress system, it will struggle to gain mainstream acceptance.
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.
I've made numerous (at least more than 100) UPI transactions, but haven't seen a single 'failure' as such. Yes, there's been delay at times, but it's just that, a delay. It's a little inconvenience at that time, but it's comparatively much rarer (and less frustrating) than OTP SMS not received problem for a credit card transaction which I just started hating. Most of the times, UPI (Tez) transactions are instant for me.
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).
5 years ago I heard of US banks printing a check and mailing it across the country (followed by all the usual delays due to clearing the check) in reaction to an online banking transaction (or ACH or whatever).
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.
I moved to India 2 years back, and surprisingly, in daily life it looks so much advanced here! Here we order groceries, food, medicines, everything online, and you think of a way of payment, and it's there. "Paytm" changed the way of digital payments forever in stores (even roadside sellers and stalls). In US I used Google Wallet to pay in stores through my phone, but with paytm it's even easier. You scan vendor's barcode, type the amount, and click 'Send'. That's all. Then came UPI, which removed another layer of uploading money beforehand. Going cashless has become a breeze.
For data usage, Google India announced[0] an app called Datally[1] to help users track and understand their data usage per app. It also has a datasaver mode of some kind to help keep usage under control.
I think we have probably reached the stage where more Americans say 'do the needful' in a vain attempt at linguistic elitism than actual Indians speaking regular Indian English.
> For one, taking credit for something they have not delivered.
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.
> For one, taking credit for something they have not delivered
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
I am wondering how does one uses Google maps while driving a two wheeler. I have driven a Yamaha in India for years and juggling a phone definitely seems risky.
Sometimes I think twice before naming our company’s projects since one may do it one day. My observation from news is that first letter is fundamental; I wouldn’t name anything starting with G. Google is world brand indeed, but the name itself feels so ugl^W unnatural to me. Now they’re locked into that Goo-gl thing.
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?
Are you saying you're having trouble distinguishing between Google Great, Google Good, Google Gumballs and Google Great GoogleyMoogley? I thought the differences were obvious! /s
they have rebranded - alphabet is the overlord brand and google is the search part of the business.google go is a natural evolution just like google assistant is a great name for a natural language assistant that leverages google search
The prices posted by OP seem to be referring to the carrier Reliance Jio. Their network speeds were great initially(20-30mbps when other carriers we're hardly at 5-10mbps). The speeds have deteriorated significantly now. The network seems to be reeling under the load of it's huge user base.
It depends on the area, I have used it in multiple cities and except one location (problem with all networks there) all else was good. There is an option in the jio app to register complaint about slow network, I have had some luck with that.
The 20-30 Mbps speeds are restricted to some areas. Urban areas such as Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad enjoy great speeds in broadband as well but for the majority of indians, reasonably fast and cheap internet connectivity means Jio. Also, the 20-30 Mbps speeds are not the norm outside certain areas but they have been able to cover a reasonably large part of the entire country.
One carrier (Jio) has a 4G only network throughout the entire country, no 3G or 2G - benefit of coming in to the market late.
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.
That is personal anual income and not family income I suppose. Remember that India has around 30% of people far too young to use cellphones. A family might have one phone and will happily spend $28 per year for the $30GB data per quarter. Also it is mostly prepaid with hundreds of plans to chose from so people chose based on their needs.
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.
By 30 GB do you mean the 1 GB per day (for a month) plan which some carriers provide nowadays? I've seen it cost in the range of Rs. 350 to 500 from some carriers, which sort of matches your numbers about GB and price.
My uncapped 100Mbps link costs me 0.7% of my monthly salary.
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.
> Tez has processed over 140 million transactions from nearly 12 million active users. There are more than 525,000 merchants already on Tez, using it to take payments, pay their suppliers or transfer money to employees.
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.
> 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.
crypto scales with need - the number of nodes are increased and the blockchain balloons in size to keep up, just like regular banking transactions do. plus the core devs are very aware of scaling issues - since it's mentioned every time financial crypto is brought up
hardware is cheap, why would crypto scaling be an issue?
> 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.)
This is a smart move for Google. There's a large market in India that isn't being used by them currently, so if they can catch that market, they'll definitely benefit from it.
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?
If there's no need to market a product as America-first, then why is there a need to market these as India-first? Like they said in the article, the products made won't just help India.
Because Google is trying to build the monopoly they have in America in India as well. They are specifically targeting the market they hope to gain capture in.
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.
> 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.
Presumably the same way saying you're a "women's rights activist" makes you fighting for a good cause and saying you're a "men's rights activist" makes you a sexist, and saying "black lives matter" is fighting for a good cause, but saying "white lives matter" makes you a Nazi.
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.
Not really America-first, but western world first definitely. Nothing about Google’s products screams USA, and they have more users outside the USA than inside it.
Tez had excellent marketing. Every time you referred a friend, you and your friend got Rs. 51 (less than $1). Every time you transacted (some min. amount) they gave out scratch cards. In my circle even those who were skeptical initially gave in to the temptation.
that's not excellent for india, that's standard. nearly every service over there gives out free money as standard SOP since indians love deals.
did i say love? i meant they will literally use your service even if it never delivers 75percent of the time as long as you give them a good deal. they'll complain but they'll use it.
however also demonstrated that indian users will jump shit asap to the competitor offering the better deal so retention is really really really hard in india
94 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadSigh. 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
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.
Aadhaar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar
[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 also imagine that many people riding two-wheelers in India are just driving dangerously.
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?
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.
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.)
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.