The Google for India 2018 edition was held in India in New Delhi on Tuesday. During the fourth edition event, many announcements were made which included new features and renaming or rebranding of Google Tez, Project Navlekha, and host of new capabilities for Google Go. Besides these all, the tech giant also announced some statistics and features of Google Maps. The features include voice navigation for public transport along with get-off alerts. According to Google, the lighter version of the app, called as Maps Go, will get updates like turn-by-turn navigation and an all-new home screen with shortcuts.
Google announced that this year the company’s Google Maps celebrates the tenth anniversary and made known some important statistics. In 2018 alone, around 50 million building identities were added to the navigation platform, it said. In India, more than 20 million users are benefiting from the two-wheeler navigation, since the launch late last year. And regarding the recent flood disaster in the state of Kerala, Google Maps is going on with its work of helping people find flood relief resources including shelters etc,
A recent partnership with bus booking service, RedBus, will give Google Maps an advantage to adding more than 20,000 inter-city bus routes in about 1,500 cities across the country. “Google Maps is also adding better public transport guidance, which will inform riders of upcoming stops and alerts on when to get off,” said Gayathri Rajan, Vice-President, Geo, Google.
During the announcement of the upcoming Google Maps Go turn-by-turn navigation and all-new home screen type of features, Google informed that the new app will still weigh a tenth of Google Maps. Google had last month launched turn-by-turn navigation to Google Maps Go in the form of another app, Navigation for Google Maps Go. It does in fact, serves as a companion app and can be easily accessed using the Navigation button after users search for a particular route on Google Maps Go. As it appears, Google seems to have given a rethought to its decision for a secondary app with the aim of integrating turn-by-turn navigation into the main Google Maps Go app.
On Tuesday, Google had announced that Google Tez will be rebranded to Google Pay in the coming next couple of weeks. With that Google aims to reach more than 15,000 retail stores in India alone through Google Pay by Diwali 2018.
Besides all these announcements, Google also announced a total of USD 1 million relief fund for the Kerala flood and a new publication tool under the Project Navlekha with new fresh and new features for Google Assistant that includes support for the Marathi language and bilingual support for national language Hindi as well as English on the Google feed.
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