Having reached its target of 400 free WiFi-enabled railway stations in India, Google India has plans to expand its free WiFi services to public places such as malls, cafés, and universities. Additionally, Google Station will collaborate with India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh to provide internet access to 12,000 villages covering a population of ten million.
Google has partnered with phone makers such as Micromax, Lava, Nokia and Transsion to create Android (Go edition) at suitable prices. The company will soon launch a new feature in Google Go that will let people listen to webpages in vernacular languages. Google Go will support twenty-eight languages including Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil — even on slow 2G internet.
The company said it was working on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with a focus on voice, video, and vernacular, since it expects this triad to shape the future of India’s Internet, as well as boost advertising business. Rajan Anandan, vice president, India and Southeast Asia said, “Voice has been emerging as the preferred mode of use for new Internet users. Online video now accounts for 75 percent of all mobile traffic. And as for vernacular, the majority of Internet users today are Indian language users, a number expected to reach 500 million plus in the next two years. Ninety-five percent of video consumption is in vernacular languages,” he said.
The company has been heavily investing in Indic language technology to make its products more accessible to those who speak in languages other than Hindi or English, or to those who don’t know how to read. Anandan believes that more Indic language content is a monetization strategy for the company.
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
