Google to bring free Wi-Fi to malls, cafes in India with Google Station

Internet giant Google has announced Google Station, which the company claims will bring fast and affordable Wi-Fi to millions of people across India. Under the service, Google plans to rollout Wi-Fi hotspots at public places such as malls, metro stations, cafes and universities across the country. The announcement was made at an event organised by the company in Gurugram today.
“The goal is to give people many hot spots within a few minutes walk from their home, university, or workplace, unified by a simple login process that works across all of them,” Caesar Sengupta, vice-president, Next Billion Users at Google said in a statement. The company plans to set up infrastructure for the same and offer unified logins to users.
The company in association with RailTel currently offers free Wi-Fi access at 52 railway stations across India and scale it up to to 100 stations by the year-end. The plan is to take the service to a total of 400 train stations in India. Presently, some 3.5 million users are said to be using the free Wi-Fi service.
The company also announced at the event that its AI-powered Google Assistant will soon be available in Hindi. Google Assistant is the company’s rival to Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana.
Google also announced that India was the first country to get its new messaging app Allo. Google Allo takes on Facebook-owned WhatsApp. Among other announcements the company said that its Chrome Data Saver now works on videos. It claims that smartphone users can save up to 67% on their data while watching on videos. Google also launched YouTube Go app, which the company claims is inspired by India.