Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and addressed India’s rising creativity and technical areas. He also thanked PM Modi for the quick speed of technological progress, commended the Indian government for the continuous relationship with Google, and showed his support for India’s G20 chairmanship. “Look forward to strengthening our collaboration and supporting India’s G20 presidency to create an open, connected internet that works for everyone,” he tweeted.
Pichai, who arrived in India on Monday for the Google for India 2022 event, spoke about India’s rise as a major technology hub and how it will soon become a major export economy. Pichai lauded the government’s Digital India goal during a Google India event, saying that it has greatly aided Google in bringing a host of projects that have helped the firm boost its growth across the country.
Pichai also said that Google is shortly working on AI-based solutions, initiatives, and new partnerships with Indian firms that will further scale up Google’s link with India and support India’s economy during the eighth edition of the Google for India event. “We are progressively leveraging AI to ramp up the number of languages. Nine more Indian languages, including Assamese, Bhojpuri, Konkani, etc., have recently been added. We are developing a robust AI model that will enable us to obtain information from countless languages,” he explained.
The Google CEO added, “We built Google Pay on top of UPI’s stack, and we’re now bringing it to other countries around the world.” He said this to praise India’s well-established UPI payment system. Regarding the issue of tech regulation in India, Pichai continued by stating that it is crucial to regulate tech in order to protect people’s privacy. However, within the legal framework, internet companies will definitely develop and innovate. In order for businesses to innovate on top of legal certainty, he continued, “it is vital to have an innovative framework.”
Interestingly, Google organizes a “Google for India” event every year to introduce new projects and changes to its products and services. At the eighth Google for India event on December 19, Google showed off a number of new features and plans. These included artificial intelligence (AI), a new multi-search tool, YouTube courses, and more. Pichai also talked to Ashwini Vaishnav, who is the minister of railways, communications, electronics, and information technology, at the event. He thanked her for all the growing opportunities. The Google CEO summed up his remarks by saying, “Glad to be able to see it up close, and I’m already looking forward to my next visit.”
