Airtel, Google team up to provide free mobile Internet to subscribers

Bharti Airtel said it has partnered with Google to launch a service ‘Free Zone’, wherein subscribers will be able to access Google services such as Gmail, Google+ and Google search on their mobile phones without any data cost.  The users, however, have to pay for advanced services such as attachment downloads, the company said in a statement.

“…Free Zone powered by Google, will give Airtel mobile customers access to mobile web search and feature phone friendly versions of Gmail and Google+ in India. The first page of a website linked from search results is provided at no data cost,” Airtel said.

The company added when users leave the Free Zone to navigate deeper into a website or download an attachment they are informed about the data charges and given the option to purchase an appropriate data package.


Airtel logo is seen in this file photo. Screengrab.

“In this market, where feature phones predominate, our association with Google to bring Free Zone to India will encourage millions of users to discover the power of mobile Internet for the very first time and leverage the amazing world of information search, email and social collaboration – at no incremental cost,” Bharti Airtel Chief Marketing Officer (Consumer Business) N Rajaram said.

Users can have unlimited access to Gmail from their mobile browser but if they click on a link or attachment within the email they are directed to a page where they can purchase a data package.

In the same way, subscribers can search Internet and access the first page of websites from the results for free. If they click further into a website after that, they are directed to a page where they can purchase a data package, it added.

“The mobile Internet user base is growing really fast in India… We hope this initiative will encourage more Indians to experience the value of the Internet and gain from it,” Google India VP and Managing Director Rajan Anandan said.

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India makes an average of 13 requests per day to Google for personal web details

 

In signs of growing Internet snooping by the enforcement authorities, India made an average of 13 requests a day to Google for access to personal web details of web users during 2012.
In terms of the number of requests for web user details during 2012, India is next to only the US, which made 45 requests a day on an average -- the highest for any country.
The US made a total of 16,407 such requests to Google during 2012, followed by India's 4,750, France's 3,239, Germany's 3,083, UK's 2,883 and Brazil's 2,777 in top-five.
The number of requests from all these countries rose in 2012, while the worldwide total also rose by 20 per cent in 2012 to 42,327, as per Google's latest Transparency Report.
The number of such requests from India also rose by about 20 per cent in 2012 from 3,946 in the previous year.
On its part, the US-based global Internet giant Google provided part or full information to the enforcement agencies from India for about two-third of the total requests received by it during 2012. The compliance rate was much higher at 88 per cent for requests received from the US.
Google publishes data for requests about user details, as also for removal of content on its various platforms, including Search, Images and YouTube, on a six-month basis.
Google received 2,319 user data requests from India during the first half of 2012, while the numbers rose to 2,431 in the second half of the year. The number of user accounts associated with such requests rose from 3,467 in the first half to 4,106 in the last six months of 2012.
The company said it regularly receives requests from governments and courts around the world to hand over user data and the number of such requests have increased with growing usage of its services every year.
Regarding the requests for removal of content, Google said that such requests are also received regularly by it from government agencies and courts around the world.
"Governments ask companies to remove content for many different reasons. For example, some content removals are requested due to allegations of defamation, while others are due to allegations that the content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or adult content," it said.
In respect of content removal requests from India, Google said: "In response to a court order, we removed 360 search results (during first half of 2012). The search results linked to 360 web pages that contained adult videos that allegedly violated an individual's personal privacy."
As per the latest available data, Google received requests from India for removal of 487 items through court orders during January-June 2012, while another 109 items were requested to be removed through police or executive orders.

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Apple's loss becomes Google's gain

 

Google has retaken the role of superstar of the tech sector with a stunning stock rally as rival Apple flounders.
Google has hit fresh all-time highs in recent weeks, and closed Friday at $831.52, capping a nearly tenfold rise from its public offering price in 2004 of $85. The stock is up about 17 percent so far in 2013.

Part of the explanation comes from the rise of its Android mobile operating system, at the expense of Apple. Android is free but gives Google the opportunity to deliver more services and ads to users.
"The negativity that is surrounding Apple at the moment is giving positivity to Google," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.
Apple, which traded as high as $700 last year, has slumped more than 35 percent and ended Friday at $431.67.
For Google, "there's a lot going forward at the moment," Milanesi told AFP, noting that the company is successfully "getting consumers into their ecosystem."
Google now appears poised to beat Apple to the symbolic level of a $1,000 share price, say some analysts.
Analysts at Jefferies said Google set a price target for Google at $1,000, saying it has been benefiting from a wide range of services beyond its traditional web search ads, including shopping and mobile ads.
"Google looks well positioned for growth with the number one market share in large, rapidly growing markets," said Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who noted that Google remains the top internet search engine and leading advertising platform.
Android now has a 70 percent share of the smartphone market, which "ensures that Google retains a large share of the mobile search market," said the research firm Trefis.
"Another reason that investors are excited about Google's stock is the fact that more than 50 percent of its revenues are generated from markets outside the United States," Trefis said in a note.
"This means that Google's revenues have ample exposure to Asia, Africa and Latin America, all of which are expected to grow at an accelerated pace over the next few years."
Analysts say a shift to the mobile internet is positive for Google, which is also producing its own hardware, including smartphones and tablets.
"We are more constructive (less fearful) on Google's ability to maintain strong growth during the mobile usage shift, and we see opportunity for revenue acceleration," said Bank of America's Justin Post.
Google has been able to tweak its AdWords software, which delivers commercial messages based on a user's profile, to squeeze more revenues from mobile than it has until now, analysts say.

Google is also starting to see potential for YouTube, the video sharing service that has produced little revenue until now.
The Mountain View, California company has been working on other projects, including its own high-end Chromebook Pixel laptop computer and Google Glass, the wearable device expected later this year.
Milanesi said that Google will not try to replicate Apple by getting a lot of revenue from hardware.
"Hardware is serving their services," she said.
One sore spot for Google is its Motorola Mobility unit, the mobile phone maker acquired for $12.5 billion. Some 1,200 jobs are being cut at the division after 4,000 last year.
"Google needs to figure out what to do with Motorola," said Trip Chowdhry at Global Equities Research, claiming that Motorola "hasn't had a single hit" in recent years.
"Within six months, Google needs to take a hard look at Motorola. If they can't deliver, the whole Motorola should be closed and shut forever."
Chowdhry noted that Google could see its momentum slowed by regulatory problems, even though it avoided antitrust action in the United States.
Google is under scrutiny on privacy and monopoly grounds in Europe, and China is also concerned about Android's dominance.
"When you grow so big, you get in the eyes of all regulators and antitrust authorities," the analyst said.
"So far Google has been very smart, quite good at dealing with them," Chowdhry added, noting however that this was "an ongoing concern."

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A better Google News experience on tablets

There’s something special about reading news on your tablet. Indeed, swiping through Google News on your tablet is a comfortable and effective way to find more articles from great publications that satisfy your needs and tickle your serendipitous interests. Starting today, Google News feels even more natural and fluid on tablet devices. For example:

• You can find new articles, news sources, and even topics of interest with intuitive gestures. Swipe horizontally between sections – from Business to Entertainment, for example – or tap “Explore in depth” to see multiple articles and other info related to a particular story.
• We’ve also added more breathing room between articles, making it easier to spot the stories you really care about.

We think these improvements will help Google News send even more visits to news sites (six billion per month and counting).  

To give it a try, just visit news.google.com with your Nexus 7, Nexus 10, or iPad.

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Google’s Foray Into Home Delivery Is a Sideshow in the Real War With Amazon

Google has done little in the past few months to disguise its ambition to battle Amazon in shopping. But the search leader’s latest reported plans to get out in the street and start delivering products directly is a sideshow to the real contest between the two companies.
Or to put it another way: Google doesn’t really need to be on the ground to win.
The Amazon-Google retail rivalry has been playing out online for years. The premise is simple: if you’re shopping online, you’re most likely to start one of two places. You go to Google for information on the product and where to buy. Or you go to Amazon for information on the product, and buy it while you’re there. In that retail equation, the more steps of the shopping process Google can snatch from Amazon, the better for Google and its advertisers, many of whom are merchants also competing with Amazon. (Though it must be said Amazon advertises heavily on Google too.)
Given all the ways Google already competes with Amazon in shopping, moving into direct selling and shipping would seem to be the logical last step — a step the company appears to be taking.
Google is planning to take on Amazon Prime by offering a same-day delivery service from local stores, TechCrunch reports. If that plan actually moves forward, it will no doubt rely on the groundwork Google started laying months ago.

First, Google started requiring merchants to pay for product listings in search results, a step toward turning its search engine into a straight-up storefront. In December, it purchased BufferBox, a startup that makes storage lockers to take delivery of stuff you order online. Last month, Google bought Channel Intelligence, an e-commerce software maker and service provider that’s been around since the first dotcom bubble.
Among the the services of Channel Intelligence is an offering called “where-to-buy,” which allows stores to let online shoppers know if they have a particular product in stock. This would come in handy for a shopping service that relies on local stores for inventory — Google would have to know what the stores have in stock before they promise delivery. A competing platform already powers eBay’s store-to-door same-day delivery service, eBay Now, which is already up and running in San Francisco, New York and Silicon Valley.
Google’s main advantage over eBay would seem to be visibility. Google gets more online traffic, which means more chances to funnel online shoppers into its own shopping services. Other than that, Google’s same-day delivery plans seem to hinge on the same concept embraced by eBay, as well as startups like Postmates, namely that brick-and-mortar stores — a city’s retail infrastructure — can stand in for the massive warehouses that anchor traditional e-commerce operations like Amazon. Instead of incurring all the costs of buying and storing inventory, the thinking goes, why not just depend on the local retailers that already have the inventory? Couriers to ferry purchases between the stores and shoppers complete the picture.
The only problem is the math. While the city-as-warehouse idea is intriguing, it hasn’t been proven. I’ve used eBay Now, and it’s fun and cool. You can watch the courier’s route in real time on the eBay Now app, and in my case I ended up with a new pair of jeans in just a little over an hour. But no one knows how far the concept could scale. Brick-and-mortar stores as they’re designed right now are still mainly for walk-in shoppers, not e-commerce fulfillment. Logistics experts say there’s no way a store can match a traditional warehouse in terms of order-fulfillment efficiency.
And it’s these warehouses that Amazon continues to build, million-square-foot engines of efficiency rising closer and closer to the same big cities where Google’s same-day service would likely roll out. Amazon has already perfected the science of getting people anything they want in a day or two.
Except for its self-driving cars and its Street View teams, Google doesn’t have a ground game. At the same time, trying to build out a physical infrastructure to compete with the billions Amazon has already invested hardly makes fiscal sense, unless Google wants to make retail its main business.
Not that you could entirely blame them. Jeff Bezos (#19) just topped Google’s founders (#20 and #21) on Forbes’ new list of the world’s billionaires, while four Wal-Mart heirs beat them both in the top twenty. The fortunes of at least two other billionaires above Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are also rooted in retail. Shopping is a huge business. It’s understandable that Google would want to be a part of it.
But however much attention a Google delivery truck might get on the streets, the real contest will still play out online, where Google and Amazon are on much more equal footing. We live in an attention economy, and Google has the attention. It also has plenty of big clients who would like nothing better than to see Amazon starved of attention. Working together, they’ll try to steer clicks away from Amazon’s shopping carts and into their own baskets — a much more efficient way to beat Amazon than boots on the ground.

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Google brings Business Photos to India

Summary: The program allows customers to walk through, explore, and take a closer look at a business premise, giving Indian businesses the ability to provide virtual tours inside the offices through interactive 360-degree imagery.

Google has officially launched its Business Photos initiative in India, allowing consumers to see inside a company's premise without actually stepping inside the location. The program allows local businesses to provide Google users a virtual tour inside the business through interactive 360-degree imagery. This imagery can be viewed on Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+ Local Pages.

The program is currently available in more than eight countries globally including United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Google Business Photos allows customers to walk through, explore, and take a closer look at a business premise. Also, businesses can embed these photos on their Web sites and social media channels using an embedded code from Google Maps.

Commenting on the value for business owners, Shailesh Nalawadi, Google's product manager of Geo, said: "For the businesses, this provides an opportunity to visually present their product and services. For example, before visiting a store to purchase an electronic device, consumers can use business photos to evaluate and view the selections offered by various retailers."

Hard Rock Cafe in an upscale pub in Pune, India's seventh largest metropolis, has its imagery on Google Maps as part of the pilot program. A customer can check out the décor, seating, and ambience before planning an evening out at the pub.

Hard Rock Cafe in Pune, India, on Google Maps

To get Google Business Photos, business owners can hire one of Google's certified Trusted Agency Photographers including Indiacom, Jindal RH Interactive, Carbon Tree, and Vox360, to capture the interiors of their premises and displays on the storefront, like business hours, rating details, credit cards accepted, and posted menus. Trusted Agency photographers are independent contractors who have been trained and certified by Google to produce high quality panoramic images. 

As a business owner, though, one can also upload own photographs to Google+ Local. 

Busienss Photos can help customers get a better sense of what a business has to offer and what sets it apart from others.

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Google introduces Books in India Play Store

 Google has extended its Google Play Books service to the Indian market. Users will be able to download ebooks from a collection of 4 million titles. The ebook store has been made live on the web version of Google Play as well as on the mobile version. Users can install the Play Books app on their Android or iOS mobile device or to download, read and manage the ebooks they've purchased. They can also read books on third party ereader apps by transferring them from their computers using the Adobe Digital Editions Desktop Reader.

Users can also preview some books on their computer or phone before buying them.

Books are stored on the cloud so users will need Internet connectivity to access them, however, the Play Books reader apps remember the page of the book where the reader left, the last time he was reading.

Google has also customised the store keeping in mind the Indian market, and has added books from Indian authors like Amish Tripathi, Devdutt Pattanaik, and Khushwant Singh, among others.

The move comes almost six months after Amazon launched the Kindle Store in India. Indian e-commerce major, Flipkart had also started offering ebooks, last year.

Pricing wise, we found Google Play Books pricier than the other two. For instance, Amish Tripathi's The Oath of The Vayuputras is available for Rs. 189 on Google Play Books, while the same ebook is priced at Rs. 175 on the Flyte store and Rs. 178 on the Kindle Store. We also found some popular titles missing on the Google Play Books store including the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.

It's worth pointing out that Google has still not enabled Music and Movie downloads on the Indian Play Store.

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Google extends social Web reach to counter Facebook's rise

Google transformed the Internet by cataloging the Web's countless pages. Now it wants to keep better track of the Web's multitude of users.
The Mountain View, California-based company said on Tuesday it would begin encouraging websites and mobile apps to accept log-in credentials via Google+, its social network.
The integration with third-party sites and apps, which Google hopes will help it track users as they surf across the Internet, represents the search powerhouse's latest effort to establish a foothold in the all-important social Web arena - and beat back competition from Facebook, the sector leader.


Sites that have so far agreed to accept Google's social sign-in include The Guardian and USA Today's websites, as well as Fancy, the shopping site, and Fitbit, the personal fitness-tracking service and app, Google said in a blog post Tuesday.
Since 2008, Facebook has been able to gather massive troves of information about its users' activities even if they are not on Facebook because many popular apps - such as Spotify's music streaming service - allow users to log in with their Facebook identity, which results in data funneled back to the social network.
In response to Facebook's rise, Google has made its social Web efforts a top priority in recent years. But results have been mixed under the leadership of Chief Executive Larry Page and Vic Gundotra, the influential senior vice president spearheading Google's social networking efforts.
Launched in 2011, Google+ still lags far behind Facebook: it had 100 million monthly active users in December, according to comScore, compared to well over 1 billion for Facebook. But Google officials have downplayed the lukewarm public reception, saying they view Google+ more as an invisible data "backbone" that tracks individual users across its various properties - and less as a consumer Internet destination.
Over the past year the company has made changes to the log-in process at its YouTube subsidiary, for instance, in order to nudge the video site's 800 million users to sign in and leave comments with their Google+ accounts rather than anonymous handles.

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