Google’s Made-For-India pitch: DigiLocker docs, YouTube courses, multi-search

Google is working on several new tools and features that it plans to introduce in the coming months. During the 'Google for India' conference event held in the country, the tech giant announced new things such as Multi Search feature, support for Digilocker for Files and more.

The Indian-born CEO Sundar Pichai, who is visiting India, said the pace of technological change in the country has been extraordinary and Google is supporting small businesses and startups, investing in cybersecurity, providing education and skills training, and applying AI (Artificial Intelligence) in sectors like agriculture and healthcare.

At the event, Google also announced a new Multi Search feature which will allow users to run a search on the browser using text and images simultaneously. The feature will come out with more Indian languages, starting with Hindi.

The tech giant also said that it is working on bringing better safety features to Google Pay, its popular digital payments app in India. This will include multi-layered intelligent warnings to alert users if the fraud detection system detects suspicious movements.

Google will integrate ‘DigiLocker’, a government-issued document storage service, into the Files app on Android so users can access government-verified documents from the app in India. The documents saved in Google Files will be stored in an isolated environment on the device and will be accessible only through a unique lock screen authentication.

Google plans to improve speech recognition technology for Hinglish speakers and is working on a model that can more effectively understand people who communicate in Hinglish. Google's new model uses a new neural-network inspired speech recognition model that takes into account the individual's accents, surrounding sounds, context and speaking style.

Google, the world's most popular search engine, is working on making text and voice internet search available in over 100 Indian languages. Google is building a single, unified AI model that will be capable of handling over 100 Indian languages across speech and text, which is part of the tech giant's global effect to bring the world's 1,000 most-spoken languages online.

The tech giant on Monday announced that it is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) model that can identify and highlight medicines within difficult-to-read handwritten prescriptions.

Google-owned video-sharing and streaming platform YouTube also announced Courses, a new product that will bring a richer learning experience for viewers and also provide a new way to monetise for creators.