At the seventh edition of Google for India, the company introduced vaccination booking through Google Assistant, a loan initiative for small businesses, some minor updates for Google Pay, and (as usual) more support for Indian languages across its platforms. While this annual event is focused on India-specific updates, in the past many of the features have gone on to become global with India serving as the ideal testing ground with its large and diverse population. But unlike previous years when major products like Tez (Google Pay) and services like free WiFi in railway stations were announced, this year was more muted. Here's a round-up of some of the key announcements at Google for India 2021. Improved local language support on Search and vaccination booking through Assistant Improved search results for local language searches: "When searching in a local language, if Google is not able to locate websites that have information in that language, it will find high-quality content on pages that may be in other languages and translate these into the language of the user’s query," the company said. Acknowledging that most information on the web is in English, Google said that this feature "aims at bridging the information gap that local language users often encounter." Audible results: Google also announced that users will now be able to hear search results out loud, "making it easier for users who prefer consuming information by listening." This feature will be available in Hinglish and five Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil. Vaccination booking…
