Facebook trails Google in regards to connecting India’s populace to the Web. It appears Google CEO Sundar Pichai is having better luck than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg when it comes to India, according to Bloomberg.
Google making quick progress in India
In the recent earnings call, Pichai said that Google started offering free Wi-Fi in the nation earlier this year at around two dozen train stations, and now the company has 2 million individuals utilizing its service every month. Millions more will join as the service grows to 100 locations by the year’s end. Google’s goal is to reach 400 stations.
A year ago, Facebook worked to get individuals online by taking care of the expenses for connecting clients to selected sites and services on their phones. Facebook’s attempt called Free Basics was obstructed by India’s telecom controller in February. This was a massive setback for Zuckerberg, who was in India to advance his project.
It must be noted that Google isn’t focusing on utilizing its Wi-Fi with ads; instead it’s planning to get more individuals online and betting that they will utilize the company’s service and see more ads.
“Lack of internet access is a vast problem; the more people address the problem, the better it is,” said Google India’s head of access programs, Gulzar Azad.
Facebook aims at less expensive web access
Meanwhile, Facebook continues to search for ways to convey less expensive web access. Presently, the U.S. firm is trying a service called Express Wi-Fi to give individuals an opportunity to purchase reasonable information packs by means of computerized vouchers and access Wi-Fi systems.
“The goal of these trials is to find an economically sustainable model for all stakeholders,” the company said in an announcement.
Both Google and Facebook are trying to expand the number of eyeballs to add to their revenue by creating places for ads in the nation of 1.3 billion people, notes C.S. Rao, director of QuadGen Wireless Solutions, which is a remote designing services company with more than 2,000 open Wi-Fi hotspots in the nation. “Their popular apps are seen to have huge growth potential in a country with youthful demographics and good technology literacy,” Rao noted.
India: a big opportunity
India is the next stop for Facebook, Google and other providers of Web services to gather their next billion users and motivate them to embrace their products. Among all the web service providers, Google has the capacity to jump in the lead by focusing on train stations and offering free-for-all access to the Internet.
According to an IAMAI report, around 33% or about 462 million of India’s populace has Web access. As per Akamai Technologies, India is positioned at 131 of 189 nations in broadband infiltration and has the lowest average connection speed in Asia.
