Google for India 2021: New translate features, YouTube Shorts, and more

Google hosted its 7th edition of annual ‘Google for India’ event today on November 18, 2021 where it announced new product updates focused on the Indian market. Like last year, this year also, the Google event was live streamed at its official YouTube channel.

This year, speakers at the event was Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice President for Search at Google along with Google Fellow & Vice President Pandu Nayak. Google India Vice-President Sanjay Gupta was also a speaker on stage. In addition to this, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan too spoke at the event along with Union Minister of State at MeITY Rajeev Chandrashekhar.

“Look at how far we’ve come, together. And this time, we’re back with more product updates, more technology innovations and a growing commitment to India’s digital journey,” said Google India.

In this event, the tech giant introduced new features and services included in its portfolio. The company also made many new announcements in the event, which include new launches, updates and collaborations. Listed are all the latest updates related to the Google for India event.

Google Career certificates

Tech giant Google is working with Coursera in order to provide new courses for students to pick up skills for digital careers such as UX design, IT management, etc. The company plans to reach one million users with these courses and also offer scholarships.

Google Assistant allows to book vaccination slot in regional language

Google Search SVP Prabhakar Raghavan revealed the number of Indians using voice queries is 2X the global average. The Google Assistant will now support end-to-end vaccination appointments. The tech giant will now guide users to register an individual for Covid-19 vaccination through Google Assistant in their native language.

Google Search new feature

A new feature have been announced in Google Search. It will give users the option to access web pages that are originally written in other languages, and see them in their preferred language. Through this, users will be able to get their queries answered in their language.

Google Read Aloud feature in native language

Google will now read aloud search results in the user’s native language. The feature will work with Hindi language and will expand to more languages soon. As per the company, it will further work with any mobile browser.

Google Classroom gets new feature

In the made developments, the Google Classroom can now let users download class work with Internet. Google Search now also has Practice problem to get access to free learning content. Google is working to make this feature accessible with poor internet connectivity.

Google Look to Speak announced

Google announced a new app – Look to Speak – last year. It enable people living with speech and motor impairments to communicate through their phones. To choose pre-written phrases for their smartphone to speak out loud, users can use their eyes. The app will now support 5 more Indian languages.

Google to work on climate-related features

Product Manager, Crisis Response & Weather at Google Nofar Peled talked about Google’s commitment to being carbon-free by 2030. The company is working on a range of climate-related efforts in India. For severe weather events, an alert will show up on the Android smartphone. To show these results, Google is partnering with IMD.

Google Pay gets new feature

Google Pay users in India will soon be able to interact in Hinglish. It will be the first app at Google to have the Hinglish option. The tech giant said that the features will be rolled out to users in early 2022. Also, the app now supports the ability to split an expense using the Group feature that will come later. Google Pay is getting a My Shop feature where a small store merchant can showcase the entire inventory from the Google Pay app itself.

Google Coursera courses prices announced

The Coursera courses of Google will cost between Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000. It is also partnering with the Tech Mahindra and NASSCOM Foundation for scholarships.

YouTube Shorts launched

Short video platform YouTube Shorts has been launched in India by Google. Through this platform, users will be able to make videos of 60 or less seconds. Short videos can be made by clicking on the plus button of YouTube mobile.

Also Read: Tech NewsWrap: Microsoft Surface Go 3 launched in India