Category Archives: Google India Blog

The Official Google Blog for India

Searching for Indian addresses on Google Maps gets better; Plus Codes — a simple location-based digital addressing system; Voice Navigation in six additional Indian languages

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Eb8V9qfL2MeyBCIxfagUG0Fdx9rQR4oqn9a2FTJDhh8e4JX9l-StLblgX1k-wt-iUiXgIUqgpBMfMY4N96BqA1F0AGtUMiOxHa3zx0K23_l3CbjY80CKPxhHn2Uelmadm_0cdhaL Suren Ruhela Director ”Next Billion Users Team”
At Google Maps, our objective has always been about organizing all location-related information, and making it more accessible and relevant for Indian users. Address search is critical for delivering on this mission.


In India, we know how challenging it can be to reach a given residential address. They are unique in format, and vary across regions, localities, and use cases. While some addresses are well-defined by street names and house numbers that are easy to find, others can be long-winded and hard to locate. The other reality is that millions of people and places in India are hard to locate -- especially those in remote areas. We are deeply committed to helping find solutions to these challenges.


Introducing Plus Codes
We have developed an open sourced solution -- Plus Codes --  which represents a simple and consistent addressing system that works across India and globally. This system is based on dividing the geographical surface of the Earth into tiny ‘tiled areas’, attributing a unique code to each of them. This code simply comprises a ‘6-character + City’ format that can be generated, shared and searched by anyone -- all that’s needed is Google Maps on a smartphone. The open source nature of Plus Codes means that applications that uses location services can easily incorporate it on their platforms for free.
Creating and using Plus Codes


To use a Plus Code, simply enter it into the Search field on Google or Google Maps, mobile or desktop. That’s it -- you’ll be instantly shown the location!


Plus Codes can be used for a wide variety of reasons including communicating the venue of a temporary event, guiding emergency services to afflicted locations, and providing an identifiable location for complicated addresses.


For more information on Plus Codes, you can visit plus.codes.


Easily add a missing address to Google Maps
In another step aimed at facilitating accurate and easy searching on Maps, we are now introducing ‘Add an Address’ -- a feature that enables you, our users, to contribute to the Maps experience from the Google Maps app. Similar to adding businesses, users can submit new or missing addresses through this feature, and we'll make sure the address is searchable in due course after verification. And yes, you do get Local Guides points for each valid submission!


Adding a missing address


Understanding addresses, especially in the Indian context (being so unique and varied,) has always been a relentless pursuit for us. After extensive research, starting today, we are making it simpler to search for addresses in India, with Smart Address Search. This is an innovative approach to providing the best estimate of the location of an address: when people aren’t aware of an exact address, they just don’t give up but try to reference other information such as a nearby landmark, business or a locality to get closer to the final destination. Smart Address Search helps doing exactly that: if Google Maps doesn’t understand the address precisely, it will try to use all the pieces of information in the address and provide options of landmarks and points of interest that the user can best identify with -- exactly like a person would have!
Using smart address search


From finding to getting there -- now in six additional languages
Since the time we launched Navigation in Hindi three years ago, we have consistently received requests to be able to change the voice-guided navigation from English to a local language. Today, we are happy to bring voice navigation in six additional Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam.
Choosing Indian languages for voice navigation


It doesn’t stop there -- India continues to inspire us, and pushes us to reimagine what Maps can do for people. And we are just getting started as we continue to build features and expand our partnerships to make the Google Maps experience more comprehensive, accurate, and reliable for our users.


Go ahead, explore your world!


Posted by Suren Ruhela, Director, Google Maps Next Billion Users

With just a flick of a wand, “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” is on Google Arts & Culture

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For Harry Potter’s fellow students at Hogwarts, “A History of Magic” is historian Bathilda Bagshot’s legendary chronicle of Wizarding history. And last year, we mere Muggles got our own version. “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” is an exhibition from the British Library containing rare books, manuscripts and magical objects from the British Library’s collection, capturing the traditions of folklore and magic from across the world, which are at the heart of the Harry Potter stories.


Turns out, the exhibition was more popular than the Three Broomsticks on a cold day … it quickly sold out. To bring the Harry Potter magic to more fans around the world, hundreds of the exhibition’s treasures from London as well as 15 online exhibits are now available in six languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese, and more coming soon) on Google Arts & Culture.


These examples shed light on what you’ll see in the exhibit. Lumos!


Jim Kay’s original painting of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy playing Quidditch.
Still waiting for your Hogwarts letter? For now, you can take your own Herbology class with Culpepper’s Herbal (used by J.K. Rowling for inspiration for Herbology coursework).


J.K. Rowling’s original sketch of the Hogwarts’ grounds (with her meticulous notes included) and the original synopsis of the first Harry Potter book.


Explore the The Ripley Scroll, which describes how to make the fabled Philosopher’s Stone.


Check out the Divination room in 360-degree tour.


Julian Harrison, lead curator of the exhibition, shares “Ten Strange Things You Didn't Know About the History of Magic.”
In a fascinating Q&A, Jim Kay (the famous illustrator of the books) what it was like to draw “The Boy Who Lived.”
Simon Costin, Director of Museum of Witchcraft and Wizardry talks about the “The Bewitching Collection.”
Bloomsbury Children’s Books publishing director Rebecca McNally talks about the “Harry Potter Effect” and the enduring magic of the series.
Visitors to the library explored the British Library’s 400-year old Celestial Globe (with constellations like Draco, Lupus and Sirius). Check out this video to see what it was like.
The British Library exhibit has proven that “interest in magic is a real global phenomenon, and has fascinated people for thousands of years,” says Julian Harrison, Lead Curator for Medieval Historical Manuscripts and “Harry Potter: A History of Magic.”
“The British Library is thrilled that our blockbuster ‘Harry Potter: A History of Magic’ exhibition can now be viewed on Google Arts & Culture. We’ve used medieval manuscripts, precious printed books and Chinese oracle bones to explore magical traditions, from the making of potions to the harvesting of poisonous plants, and from the study of the night sky to the uses of unicorns.”
To explore these magical traditions for yourself, check out The British Library collections online with Google Arts & Culture and on our iOS and Android apps


Posted by Suhair Khan, Program Manager Google Arts & Culture

Search for health symptoms in English and Hindi in the Google App

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Picture this: you woke up with a headache. It’s been getting worse all day, and you aren’t sure if you should be worried or not. If you’re like many of us then chances are you’ll go online and search for your symptoms. You’re not alone. Roughly 1 percent of searches on Google are symptom-related. But health content on the web can be difficult to navigate, and tends to lead people from mild symptoms to scary and unlikely conditions, which can cause unnecessary anxiety and stress.


In 2016, we introduced health condition cards to make it easier for Indians to find reliable health information.  Starting this week, we will be adding information about commonly searched symptoms. Say you’re not feeling well and search for symptoms like “cough and pain”, we’ll show you a list of related conditions (“common cold, acute bronchitis, flu, pneumonia, chest infection”).  For individual symptoms like “सिरदर्द ” we’ll also give you an overview description along with information on self-treatment options and what might warrant a doctor’s visit. By doing this, our goal is to help you to navigate and explore health conditions related to your symptoms, and quickly get to the point where you can talk to a health professional or do more in-depth research on the web.

To make sure the information is tailored to India, we’ve been working closely with a team of medical doctors at Apollo Hospitals. “Apollo Hospitals has always been committed to empowering individuals with knowledge and involving them in their own care,” says Ms. Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited. “This is a significant trend and we are happy to have partnered on this initiative with Google. At Apollo Hospitals, we have always made optimal use of digital technology for the benefit of patients. The abundant experience and expertise of our consultants was drawn towards providing clinical validation of the symptoms to spread the message of awareness and prevention of diseases. With the launch of the Symptom Search Project, we aim to provide quality healthcare information which can be accessed by a billion Indians.”

These search results are intended for informational purposes only, and you should always consult a doctor for medical advice and treatment. We hope that this basic information helps make it easier for you to know what questions to ask your doctor. So the next time you’re worried about an upset stomach, or want to look up symptoms for someone in your family, a Google search will be a helpful place to start.


The new symptom search experience will be available in Hindi and English on the Google App (Android and iOS).

Posted by Henrique Bejgel, Software Engineer, Google Search

Updates to YouTube Live Streaming

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/8ltnw2zxXdd2Ib9eUWGa1Xg_ruQ_XQtqaVEnnbsrpp63K2C7kYD_cyqD2W9fY_mEs_8GSW_TUPrE42e_N3G5R1hQGWuxJOeZenab_OkQhFmge9SKQtYcUzPVj-iTao9hToQsBmL0 Kurt Wilms Live Video Product Lead ”YouTube”
Together, we've experienced the biggest music, sports, science, culture and gaming events unfold live on YouTube. Now we’re introducing more ways to watch live videos and interact with your community in real time.


Catching up on the latest


Live chat plays a key role in creating connections between creators and their community. Today we are starting to roll out chat replay to YouTube, so you can follow the conversation even after a live stream is over. Live chat replays will show up alongside the video, exactly as it appeared live.




Making live streams more accessible


We launched automatic captions back in 2009, and since then, we’ve auto-captioned a staggering 1 billion videos. We’re now bringing English automatic captions to live streams.




When professionally provided captions aren’t available, our new live automatic captions provide creators a quick and inexpensive way to make live streams accessible to more people. With our live automatic speech recognition (LASR) technology, you’ll get captions with error rates and latency approaching industry standards. We'll roll this out in the coming weeks, and will continue to improve accuracy and latency of automatic captions.


More fun features for live streamers


Creators can now add a location tag to their mobile live streams and video uploads and share all their favorite hot spots with viewers. You can explore other videos with the same location tag by simply clicking on it. You can also use the location filter on the search results page to find other videos from a specific spot.
With live streams, you’ve found more intimate and spontaneous ways to share your thoughts, lives, and creativity. Take these features for a spin and show us your world!


Posted by Kurt Wilms, Live Video Product Lead, recently watched Falcon Heavy Test Flight

Google announces a ‘Developer Students Club’ summit, to nurture India’s next-generation in technology

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/a1aEyOU2zFmho3vtB45lljb68K33MLnjSJOh-lV75QumjFs8JJQG3ln6pJca3xWxO4xQprkBxaO_MwsEW-kqr4zxtmXHFx2dXkgk9ygwqdxK1t0Aa_oWYcgKZZHuwvFkpz9WHMiO William Florance Developer Products Group and Skilling Lead ”Google”

Continuing to broaden the access to world class technology curricula and giving the large Indian student community a head start on latest technologies like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Mobile & Web Development, we are delighted to kick off the inaugural Developer Student Club Summit in Goa. The program is aimed at inspiring and training student ambassadors who will encourage students in their campuses to learn newer areas of technologies that will equip them with the right skill sets as they step out of colleges to join the workforce.

In the inaugural batch, 200 student ambassadors from 98 cities across 170 colleges in India, will attend the three day Summit (Feb 23- Feb 25) in Goa and learn about various emerging technologies like Mobile and Web development, Machine Learning, AR/VR, Artificial Intelligence, and Cloud Platforms. The summit will see a series of engaging sessions from experts from Google and industry, hands-on one-to-one mentoring activities, that will help the students to unlock their creative potential. The summit will also have a ‘Design Thinking’ workshop by the  University Innovation Fellows from across India, encouraging them to find creative and innovative solutions, using advanced technologies to solve for India’s complex problems. 

"It is an awesome feeling teaching others what you know; we are not only teaching but also growing ourselves. " -- Spoorthi V, Vidya Vikas Institute of Engineering and Technology, Mysuru

"I have special respect for DSC than other any other program previously I've been a part of because the DSC program is changing me into a entirely new person, a more mature, sensible and empathetic man and I really owe the DSC program a lot." -- Christy Anoop, CMR Institute of Technology, Bengaluru

This effort is inline with our larger program of training  two million developers in India.  Last year, we also announced 130K scholarships for both working professionals and students community, that gives them access to new-age technology and an opportunity to gain skills they require to be successful in the changing technology landscape. Our goal is to help nurture future developers and leaders and create a pool of highly skilled tech workforce, that is readily employable by the Industry and help spur innovation. 

We are excited about this new program and will host a series of such summits over the course of next 12 months. 



Posted by William Florance, Developer Products Group and Skilling Lead, Google


Google launches support for Tamil languages ads

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After Hindi and Bengali, AdWords and Adsense to now support Tamil


India has 234* million Indian language users who are online (compared to 175 million English web users) and it is expected that another 300 million Indian language users will come online in the next three years. The most important aspect of making the web more useful and meaningful for Indian users is to make India’s Internet more representative of today’s India.  

To make the web more inclusive, useful and meaningful for Indians, It’s essential to work towards creating useful content in local languages and focus on native language advertising to establish a connection with the audience.

We have been working on this front for the last couple of years and we are delighted to announce Tamil support in our advertising products - Google AdWords and Google AdSense. Advertisers will now be able to develop a rich and seamless campaigns to target their audience through Tamil-language search and display ads. In addition to that, content creators who have websites and blogs in Tamil will be able to sign up for Google Adsense and run ads on their content and attract advertisers from across the globe.

We saw a huge acceleration in Hindi content creation, when we launched support for Hindi languages, and we hope that the addition of new languages like Bengali (launched late last year) and now Tamil will provide the necessary boost to content creation in local languages and grow digital advertising in Indian languages.

To start monetizing your Tamil content website with Google AdSense:
                      1. Check the AdSense program policies and make sure your website is compliant.
                      2. Sign up for an AdSense account
                      3. Add the AdSense code to start displaying relevant ads to your
*Source: Indian Languages - Defining India’s Internet Report by KPMG
By Shalini Girish, Director - Google Marketing Solutions, Google India


Assessing Cardiovascular Risk Factors with Computer Vision

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SEGNUPxuOvk/Wod2Xe6-fFI/AAAAAAAACYU/ev6DIqX-QscoTPiy7Rqp1BebMQclIifcQCLcBGAs/s640/image1.png Lily Peng MD PhD Product Manager Google Brain Team
Heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular (CV) diseases continue to be among the top public health issues. Assessing this risk is critical first step toward reducing the likelihood that a patient suffers a CV event in the future. To do this assessment, doctors take into account a variety of risk factors — some genetic (like age and sex), some with lifestyle components (like smoking and blood pressure). While most of these factors can be obtained by simply asking the patient, others factors, like cholesterol, require a blood draw. Doctors also take into account whether or not a patient has another disease, such as diabetes, which is associated with significantly increased risk of CV events.


Recently, we’ve seen many examples [1–4] of how deep learning techniques can help to increase the accuracy of diagnoses for medical imaging, especially for diabetic eye disease. In “Prediction of Cardiovascular Risk Factors from Retinal Fundus Photographs via Deep Learning,” published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, we show that in addition to detecting eye disease, images of the eye can very accurately predict other indicators of CV health. This discovery is particularly exciting because it suggests we might discover even more ways to diagnose health issues from retinal images.


Using deep learning algorithms trained on data from 284,335 patients, we were able to predict CV risk factors from retinal images with surprisingly high accuracy for patients from two independent datasets of 12,026 and 999 patients. For example, our algorithm could distinguish the retinal images of a smoker from that of a non-smoker 71 per cent of the time. In addition, while doctors can typically distinguish between the retinal images of patients with severe high blood pressure and normal patients, our algorithm could go further to predict the systolic blood pressure within 11 mmHg on average for patients overall, including those with and without high blood pressure.


LEFT: image of the back of the eye showing the macula (dark spot in the middle), optic disc (bright spot at the right), and blood vessels (dark red lines arcing out from the bright spot on the right). RIGHT: retinal image in gray, with the pixels used by the deep learning algorithm to make predictions about the blood pressure highlighted in shades of green (heatmap). We found that each CV risk factor prediction uses a distinct pattern, such as blood vessels for blood pressure, and optic disc for other predictions.

In addition to predicting the various risk factors (age, gender, smoking, blood pressure, etc) from retinal images, our algorithm was fairly accurate at predicting the risk of a CV event directly. Our algorithm used the entire image to quantify the association between the image and the risk of heart attack or stroke. Given the retinal image of one patient who (up to 5 years) later experienced a major CV event (such as a heart attack) and the image of another patient who did not, our algorithm could pick out the patient who had the CV event 70 per cent of the time. This performance approaches the accuracy of other CV risk calculators that require a blood draw to measure cholesterol.


More importantly, we opened the “black box” by using attention techniques to look at how the algorithm was making its prediction. These techniques allow us to generate a heatmap that shows which pixels were the most important for a predicting a specific CV risk factor. For example, the algorithm paid more attention to blood vessels for making predictions about blood pressure, as shown in the image above. Explaining how the algorithm is making its prediction gives doctor more confidence in the algorithm itself. In addition, this technique could help generate hypotheses for future scientific investigations into CV risk and the retina.


At the broadest level, we are excited about this work because it may represent a new method of scientific discovery. Traditionally, medical discoveries are often made through a sophisticated form of guess and test — making hypotheses from observations and then designing and running experiments to test the hypotheses. However, with medical images, observing and quantifying associations can be difficult because of the wide variety of features, patterns, colors, values and shapes that are present in real images. Our approach uses deep learning to draw connections between changes in the human anatomy and disease, akin to how doctors learn to associate signs and symptoms with the diagnosis of a new disease. This could help scientists generate more targeted hypotheses and drive a wide range of future research.


With these promising results, a lot of scientific work remains. Our dataset had many images labeled with smoking status, systolic blood pressure, age, gender and other variables, but it only had a few hundred examples of CV events. We look forward to developing and testing our algorithm on larger and more comprehensive datasets. To make this useful for patients, we will be seeking to understand the effects of interventions such as lifestyle changes or medications on our risk predictions and we will be generating new hypotheses and theories to test.


References
[3] Esteva, A. et al. Dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer with deep neural networks. Nature (2017). doi:10.1038/nature21056

Posted by Lily Peng MD PhD, Product Manager, Google Brain Team

Google Arts & Culture unveils the archaeological artefacts of the future

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/kxKA1BG-NkXMaxuQOJjNZ9NIgIEVCOh9e4d8D8t4QMZaB7RYMJYBPwKr_LfrL2YRU8ACQtYygTO5MMIpPjBg2L5WYAt0rB4-_dAdh059QZmzFE5T6AjR9CO1u4Bi337kb4pme69X Freya Murray Program Manager and Creative Lead ”Google Arts & Culture Lab”
What object would you like archaeologists 1000 years from now to remember our present day culture by? When we launched our first lab experiment in India three months ago, we invited people, visiting the ‘India and the World: A History in Nine Stories,’ exhibition at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) museum in Mumbai to respond to this question and by doing so their responses contributed to the design of a growing collection of vases, representing the objects that matter the most to people today. We engaged thousands of people, sharing their object in diverse voices - be it Hindi, Marathi or English.


The Future Relics interactive installation that is part of the ‘India and the World exhibition’ at CSMVS museum, Mumbai


Ranging from daily-use objects to uncommon tidings, the ten most popular keywords now 3D printed on ceramic vases, to be preserved as Future Relics are Mobile, Car, Computer, Books, Can, Utensils, Spectacles, Plastic, Gold, and Soil, and personify the concept of shared artefacts. They have been digitally designed, 3D printed using customized technology by artist Ronald Rael, and glazed by one of India’s leading master craftsman of ceramics and Padma Shri awardee Shri Brahmdeo Ram Pandit.


Future Relics 3D printing workshop conducted at CSMVS museum, Mumbai


Finished vases that truly blend ancient craft and modern technology to build relics for the future


When we developed the Future Relics project in partnership with CSMVS, we wanted users to participate in an interactive and shared journey that connects past with present, whilst looking to the future. For centuries pots have helped us uncover the lost stories of cities and civilisations! Future Relics highlights this heritage, responding directly to India and the World’s exploration of pots as storytelling objects to create a series of artefacts for future generations that reveal insight into our lives today. This unique collaboration of art and technology has drawn upon both technological innovation and a highest form of traditional craftsmanship.


As we gift the final artworks to the CSMVS museum in Mumbai, it marks a special collaboration and we hope this series of Future Relics will acts as a time capsule for future generations to uncover.


Unveil of physical artefacts ‘Future Relics’ with Mr. Mukherjee (Director of CSMVS), BR Pandit (Master Ceramicist), Simon Rein (Program Manager, Google Arts & Culture)


By Freya Murray, Program Manager and Creative Lead, Google Arts & Culture Lab

Bill payments made simple, on Tez

https://img.youtube.com/vi/BeAd2n4_Vhg/maxresdefault.jpg Diana Layfield VP, Payments & Commerce, ”Next Billion Users”
Paying bills takes time, whether it's queuing, hopping around to multiple offices, or jumping between apps. And then we need to hunt around for customer account details, enter in card numbers, or reload a wallet balance. Paying your bills could be much simpler — and could save you a lot of time.


So today, Tez is adding a specially designed experience that lets you pay your bills in seconds, not minutes. Adding a new biller is a breeze, and you only have to do it once. Just tap on New Payment and then Pay your bills. You’ll see a list of billers supported on Tez across locations. You can also search for them by name. Once you’ve located your biller, enter the number associated with your account to link it to Tez and give it an easy name to remember.


For most recurring utility bills, Tez will fetch any new bill and send you a timely notification when it arrives. Checking whether you’ve paid a bill in the app is as simple as tapping the biller’s name on your Tez home screen. There, you’ll be able to view all past payments grouped by biller, as well as manage bills from multiple accounts.



We’ll start with support for more than 80 billers, including national and state electricity providers, gas and water, and DTH recharge. These include billers like Reliance Energy, BSES and DishTV, and in total will cover all states and major metros in India. Tez also supports Bharat BillPay system, which lets you fetch the latest bill from your providers.


Today’s roll out of bill payments on Tez comes with an exciting new offer. For every new biller you pay this month, you’ll get a scratch card that could win you up to ₹1000.


We’ve designed bill payments to be the most convenient way to manage life’s expenses, so you can pay right from your bank account in just a few taps. We can’t wait for you to try it out and see how much time you save.


Posted by Diana Layfield, VP, Payments & Commerce, Next Billion Users

Map the change you want to see with Google Earth Outreach

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mnjuxJKkBeihpq8YCn6e4Nbd0BvQfCDyUySgWL4yS4KYMox0MPE-re-s19zn9-daZ9Wdbr87Tj-ZNKiH7A-nvRSw1QqebgOAs4zRXrQ Allie Lieber Program Manager Google Earth Outreach
As India’s environmental and cultural landscape is rapidly changing, nonprofit organizations across India are using the latest technology to raise awareness about key issues, and share the benefits of development with the masses. Today the Google Earth Outreach team is expanding the program in India, offering support to those nonprofits and public benefit organizations that wish to leverage Google's mapping tools to create knowledge, visualize their message and enable action. We are conducting multi-city trainings, engaging in outreach activities, and surfacing ways in which local nonprofits have been using these tools.




For example, the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) uses Earth Engine to track the changes in forest cover near Bandipur National Park, a tiger reserve in Karnataka, over time.  NCF used cloud-removal techniques to map the damage due to a fire in the summer of 2017. Similar large-scale analyses were used to measure the impact of a conservation programme by Namma Sangha, a non-governmental organisation that has been working to halt forest loss by providing cooking gas to villagers that previously harvested fuel-wood from the Bandipur Tiger Reserve.


India Literacy Project uses Google Earth to create immersive educational experiences for rural classrooms. They have created Voyager stories focused on historical sites, kingdoms and rivers, which are all a vital part of the school curriculum. Rather than learning about these places through thumbnail images in textbooks, the students are transported across India and around the world.


“The project expands students’ horizons,” says Padmaja Sathyamoorthy, India Literacy Project Operations Coordinator. “It’s not just about learning curriculum from a textbook. I believe it creates a curiosity and a love for learning that will last a lifetime.”


For Indian NGOs looking to learn more, see Google Earth Outreach and Google for Nonprofits websites. We’d love to get in touch. Share your stories with us at [email protected] and stay up-to-date by joining our mailing list.  

Posted by Allie Lieber, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach