Google For India 2018: Everything you need to know- free internet, flood relief plan, Google Pay

Google has released some significant upgrades in its fourth edition of Google for India 2018 event that was held in Delhi. This annual event by Google is known for a multitude of announcements directly aimed at the Indian audience. Google's today's event also announced various hi-tech developments and changes in its online as well as the offline ecosystem.

Online giant Google has introduced three goals that will drive its services in India. The three-goal includes-"Making internet work for more Indians; Making Google's products relevant to Indians, and Taking the best of India to the rest of the world".

One Major change Google launched during the event is from now on Google's digital payments app Tez app will be called Google Pay. Tez app was launched by Google on September 2017 and now almost 22 million people use this app on monthly basis.

Google today informed in the Google for India event that it will bring Google Station to over 12,000 villages of Andhra Pradesh in partnership with Andhra Pradesh State FiberNet Ltd (APSFNL). This is an initiative to provide Internet access to about 10 million people. Earlier, Google had partnered RailTel to provide Wi-Fi access across 400 railway stations in the country.

In another change, The Google Feed is now going to be bilingual in India. This signifies that users will see both Hindi and English content in this feed.

A search app Google Go will help entry-level smartphones that don't have the very powerful hardware. According to Google Indian phone users will be able to "pull up any web page in English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, and Tamil, and simply listen to it with each word lighting up as it's read."

Google Maps Go now supports turn-by-turn navigation. Google Maps is also going to use data from RedBus now. The company said, "Thanks to a new partnership with RedBus - India's largest inter-city bus ticketing service - more than 20,000 routes and 1,500 cities will also be added for intercity bus journey routes,".

From now on the Google Assistant will now support the Marathi language along with Hindi and English with a view to reaching more users. Apart from this seven additional languages will be supported to the Assistant in the upcoming months. Besides the tech major is also working with the strong 100,000 plus offline Indian language publishers on ‘Project Navlekha’, which permit them to conveniently start their website and publish on a branded domain by using a few simple clicks.

In what seems like a charity initiative Google.org will contribute $1 million to the relief and restoration work in flood devasted Kerala and Karnataka. In one of it's official statement the company said,"Taking note of the impact of the floods in Kerala and Karnataka, Google also shared that Google.org is making a $1M USD grant (including contributions from Googlers across the world) to several NGOs in India to support the relief and recovery efforts in the most impacted regions,"

Rajan Anand, Google, vice president of India and Southeast Asia, during the Google for India event said, " Voice has been emerging as the preferred mode of use for new internet users. We’re seeing major growth of voice queries in India. Furthermore, online video now accounts for 75 percent of all mobile traffic."