Prevention or Cure? How Will Google Pixel Impact Internet In India.

Here’s how India works. If, say a school teacher in rural Madhya Pradesh (in picture) wants to buy a laptop, he will first take a hardware course and then make his purchase because there is nobody else in the vicinity to troubleshoot problems for him. Every small village will hopefully have one geeky 20-something who sets up Google accounts for everyone so that they can use their smartphones. And God help if they accidentally sign themselves out, nobody knows or remembers their login credentials and all their data is lost. In short, India has a Digital Literacy problem. And the internet is so relevant and necessary for rural India that you might as well teach adults how to use a smartphone while they learn how to read children’s stories. But how likely is it for anyone to think of setting up “Mobile phone labs” like they did (and still struggle to do so) with “computer labs”? Exactly my point.

At the risk of excluding the rest of the world and their problems with basic digital access, I’m going to talk about what the launch of Google Pixel means for India (where there are already 236 million mobile internet users). There is patchy internet connection in all non-urban spaces, yet people own affordable smartphones, mostly the ones with multiple SIM card holders to switch between fickle networks. Reliance Jio has ambitiously stepped in to solve this problem, and is also distributing free SIM cards for which people are lining up around the block. To borrow from the adage, this is like feeding fish to the hungry man but not teaching him how to use the fishing rod. In the tech context, this means- TEACH people how to use the internet in the first place.

First, a few unnecessary words about Google Pixel’s awesomeness (and for the necessary words, click here). Since nearly 10 out of 5 internet users always use Google search for finding everything on the web, it makes a little sense to package all of Google’s products and services into every user’s palm. Except, of course, you need to have at least INR 43,000 to procure it. It is a price many people are willing to pay, considering they’re just as open to paying for iPhones. Pixel costs lesser, at least.

For the people who’re inclined to compare the merits of iPhone and Pixel, please stop right there. Both phones are stuffed with features and look more lovely than Katrina Kaif in a dance number. The ‘packaging’ is brilliant and beyond the league of anybody’s aesthetics. But let’s look at the ‘package’ for a minute.

Google Pixel is not a phone that is a phone. Remember how we evolved from having cameras in our phones to using our phones to actually place calls?

Let’s just say Pixel takes it a step further, with a little something called Google Assistant.

Yes, Siri is still smart and useful. But here’s the difference- while other smartphones have a smart assistant in them, Pixel looks like a phone that was made just for the smart assistant to be. Pixel is the physical manifestation of today’s kickass AI.

Before bloggers everywhere ruin Pixel for the world with their out of the box analyses, let me make a few obvious predictions. With the new Google Assistant, I no longer have to put on an accent to talk to my phone, because now it’s supposed be far natural and easier to communicate with it. What’s more, by the end of the year, Google Allo is all set to launch Hindi as a language for communication. It’s not the most efficient solution for other regional language speakers, but it’s a beginning.

The way Pixel works, it seems to be a good preventative measure, rather than a well thought out (and resource draining) cure. But what of its price? Well, today it might cost us an arm and a leg, but when I think of how my father bought his first Samsung flip phone and his latest Motorola smartphone at the same price over a ten year period, there’s hope. After all, tech adoption is so much more demand driven today.

Originally published at blog.nowfloats.com on October 5, 2016.