India is poised to become even more important to Google than the United States, which is why the company is not only trying to expand its products and services in the country, it’s also working to increase internet access and train engineers. At at a press even in India this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that his company is helping bring internet access to dozens of train stations and tens of thousands of rural villages across the country, and is planning to train more than two million Indian developers. On top of that, the company is building a massive new campus in Hyderabad, and is hiring more employees in both Hyderabad and Bangalore.
Google’s Sundar Pichai has been in India this week to host the “Google for India” press event. The tech giant has just announced that it will be starting up a number of new initiatives in the country, including public WiFi initiatives, country specific service optimizations and additional development taking place in the country itself. To start with, Google announced new plans to increase its engineering presence in India with a major expansion at its Hyderabad campus. The company says that the expansion will be working to bring all Indians online. Google is also launching a program to train two million new Android developers over the next three years and will be working closely with 30 Universities across the country to offer courses. As part of its efforts to tailor services specifically to Indian consumers, Google is also planning to further improve support for 2G connections. Google already introduced its “lighter” search results for mobile this year and the Android Chome browser was also recently updated with an improved Data Saver mode. Google Maps and Youtube also now have offline modes, which is certainly useful in patchy or slow network areas.