Google CEO Sunder Pichai has announced the company plans to expand its Hyderabad campus and bring Wi-Fi connectivity to over 100 railway stations across India. He also said the brand is working on making its products more accessible to those who rely on 2G networks for browsing the internet.
Pichai made these announcements at the ongoing Google For India event. He claims the country comes second only to the US in terms of the total number of mobile search queries on a global level. The nation additionally has one of its largest employee pools outside of the US with nearly 1700 staff members.
Google is looking to add more workers in the future, focusing on its engineering presence in India. The expansion of its Hyderabad campus will play a major part in that. The tech giant officially confirmed it would kickstart its high-speed Wi-Fi initiative at the Mumbai Central railway station in January. The program has been organized in collaboration with Railtel and Indian Railways.
Pichai had first announced the project back in September this year. The project is looking to cover over 400 stations, with 100 of them becoming active by the end of 2016. The initial rollout is supposed to bring roughly 10 million people online. Google is also set to expand its internet bike project which aims to connect Indian women residing in rural areas.
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The enterprise was started in partnership with Tata Trusts and has already covered 1000 villages till date. Google’s goal is to reach 300000 towns within 3 years. It’s also currently working on adapting its products to work on slow or spotty 2G networks. For instance, it plans to improve a person’s buffering experience on YouTube by allowing them to access other apps while the video loads in the background.
Finally, Google is rolling out a program where it will train 2 million Android developers over the course of the next 3 years. The company has joined hands with 30 universities in India and the National Skill Development Corporation to get the project off the ground.