Fintech major PhonePe on Wednesday announced the launch of its homegrown Indus Appstore specifically for the Indian market, in a bid to compete with global incumbents like Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. The Indus Appstore is PhonePe's attempt at creating a more competitive and localised mobile app store economy for India, which is already the world's largest market for mobile apps.
After failing to get a court order to block an antitrust ruling, Google on Wednesday said it will allow users in India to choose default search engine on Android-based smartphones. As part of the key changes the tech giant will make to its platforms and business in India in the aftermath of the landmark CCI ruling, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) will be able to license individual Google apps for pre-installation on their devices. Google is also updating the Android compatibility requirements to introduce changes for partners to build non-compatible or forked variants, the company said in its blog.
In classifieds, over 41 per cent job searches were from mobile phones.
India's demographic advantage and diverse economic landscape position it uniquely to benefit from AI, the Economic Survey for 2024-25 tabled in the Parliament on Friday afternoon asserted. However, achieving these benefits requires significant investments in education and workforce skilling, supported by enabling, insuring, and stewarding institutions, the state of the economy report tabled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.
160 years since the first passenger train chugged out of Bori Bunder for Thane.
It also asked the technology giant to ensure more transparency in the revenue reports provided to publishers.
To warn users about the threat, the company recently published a blog post where they listed these banned domain links which used to inject spying tools into users' PCs/laptops by appearing as fake login pages for websites or apps.
Google has approached the appellate tribunal NCLAT challenging the CCI's order on unfair business practices in Android mobile device ecosystem, the company spokesperson said on Friday. The Competition Commission in October slapped a steep penalty of Rs 1,337.76 crore on internet giant Google for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in relation to Android mobile devices and ordered the internet major to cease and desist from various unfair business practices. A Google spokesperson told PTI: "We have decided to appeal the CCI's decision on Android as we believe it presents a major setback for our Indian users and businesses who trust Android's security features, and potentially raising the cost of mobile devices."
As Google evaluates its response to two recent penalties slapped by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), here is a look at the app economy. Apps are bread and butter for mobile operating systems. India ranks second in the number of mobile downloads, with nearly 27 billion downloads in 2021, according to Deloitte. Accounting for 11.6 per cent of global app downloads, the Indian smartphone user spends over 4 hours a day on apps.
Harleen Deol underscored her growing maturity with an impressive maiden hundred
A Judicial member of the appellate tribunal NCLAT has recused himself from hearing a petition filed by tech giant Google, appealing against Rs 936.44 crore penalty imposed by competition watchdog CCI for abusing its dominant position with respect to Play Store policies. On Monday, NCLAT bench Justice Rakesh Kumar and Alok Srivastava ordered Google's appeal to be listed before another bench of which Justice Rakesh Kumar is not a party. It has asked the registry of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) to place it before the chairman of the appellate tribunal for this.
Dilip, who replaced R Sridhar as India fielding coach during Rahul Dravid's stint as head coach, continued in his role when Gautam Gambhir took over as well.
'...he had to take his exams in Hindi at IIT-Kharagpur.' 'You wouldn't have got someone like Sundar Pichai because Hindi is not a friendly language for a person from Tamil Nadu.'
On Jawaharlal Nehru's 61st death anniversary, Utkarsh Mishra recalls how India's first prime minister cultivated a unique role for the newly independent country on the world stage.
Google is building voice and text search for over 100 Indian languages and will spend $75 million to support women-led startups in the country, said its CEO Sundar Pichai at the start of his visit to India - a nation that he saw as a big export economy. India, he said, will be a big export economy and it needs to create a balance between safeguarding citizens and enabling companies to innovate with its framework. Pichai first met Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and spoke at a Google for India 2022 event before calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The US on Wednesday mourned the death of veteran industrialist and philanthropist Ratan Naval Tata, remembering him as someone who drove India to greater prosperity and development. Tata, the former Tata Group chairman who transformed a staid group into India's largest and most influential conglomerate, breathed his last at south Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital at 11.30 pm on Wednesday. He was 86. "My last meeting with Ratan Tata at Google, we talked about the progress of Waymo and his vision was inspiring to hear. He leaves an extraordinary business and philanthropic legacy and was instrumental in mentoring and developing modern business leadership in India.
"Sundar has been doing a great job as Google's CEO, driving strong growth, partnerships, and tremendous product innovation. I really enjoy working with him and I am excited that he is joining the Alphabet board," Larry Page, CEO of California-based US multinational conglomerate Alphabet, said in a statement on Monday.
Fair trade regulator CCI on Thursday alleged that Google has created a digital data hegemony and called for a market space with "free, fair and open competition". Concluding the arguments of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) before the appellate tribunal NCLAT in the Google matter, Additional Solicitor General N Venkataraman said a market with greater freedom for all players would be in total sync with principles of free competition rather than the 'walled garden' approach of the internet major. On October 20 last year, the CCI slapped a penalty of Rs 1,337.76 crore on Google for anti-competitive practices in relation to Android mobile devices.
Google received 26,087 complaints from users and removed 61,114 pieces of content based on those complaints in November, the tech giant said in its monthly transparency report.
Developers are expected to not only just learn coding but also oversee what the AI agents are doing.
In addition to reports from users, Google also removed 3,84,509 pieces of content in October as a result of automated detection.
After registering a Preliminary Enquiry against Google for alleged mapping of classified areas, CBI has sought help of Survey of India which has alleged that the Internet giant continued to "pollute" the web with classified material despite being warned against it.
At 250 million unique visitors a month, MX Player has for long been in the same bracket as YouTube (454 million) and Meta (324 million) in reach.
The Competition Commission is understood to have issued demand notices to Google for its failure to pay within the stipulated time the penalties imposed on the internet major for anti-competitive practices, according to sources. Google has filed appeals before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against the Competition Commission of India's (CCI) two orders in October. The appeals are yet to be heard by the tribunal.
A new cyber fraud known as 'pig butchering scam' or 'investment scam' has emerged, targeting unemployed youths, housewives, students, and needy people who are made to lose large sums of money daily, according to the latest annual report of the Union home ministry.
Pichai is in India along with eight Google vice-presidents, including those for Search, YouTube, Maps, and Android among others.
Scrutiny of Google's code of conduct in the Indian Android ecosystem is far from over with several start-ups preparing to appeal against the company's revised policies of service fee on in-app purchases and subscriptions, according to sources in the know. This comes days after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) granted partial relief to the tech giant, reversing four of the 10 key non-monetary directives that would have forced Google to allow uninstalling of its pre-installed apps on Android devices. Paytm, BharatMatrimony, and ShareChat are among the start-ups that are likely to file grievances against the tech major for alleged non-compliance with the Competition Commission of India's (CCI's) cease-and-desist order on Play Store policies.
Google India, the Indian unit of the global internet giant, said on its official blog that it has launched an 'India Get Your Business Online' programme to provide website, internet domain and web hosting services to small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the country.
Google provides the training material in local languages.
With the Supreme Court turning down Google's plea for a stay on the CCI order, the tech giant on Friday said it is reviewing the details of the decision which is limited to interim relief and did not decide the merits of the appeal. The company said it remains committed to users and partners and "will cooperate with the CCI on the way forward in parallel with our appeal." In a setback to Google, the Supreme Court on Thursday endorsed the order of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) declining to grant an interim stay on the imposition of Rs 1,337 crore penalty on the US tech major by the competition regulator for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the Android mobile device ecosystem.
'The startup ecosystem, the government, and the owners of large pools of Indian capital need to actively support the creation of these local champions, not pull down the teams that are trying hard to get there.'
'There is need for India-specific pricing.' 'Google, Microsoft and others also have different pricing.' 'It is important for OpenAI to think on these lines as the global pricing may not work in the Indian context.'
'As you're watching the IPL live, there's a conscious effort to showcase the entertainment portfolio.'
The Delhi high court on Thursday warned social networking site Facebook India and search engine Google India that websites can be "blocked" like in China if they fail to devise a mechanism to check and remove objectionable material from their web pages.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal's scathing remarks on Indian startup ecosystem and its innovation priorities have drawn sharp reaction from the industry, with Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha putting up a strong defence citing the company's contribution to jobs, FDI and terming it a "miracle in Indian innovation".
The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to entertain the plea of US tech giant Google against an order of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) refusing an interim stay on the competition regulator imposing a Rs 1,337 crore penalty on it. A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and J B Pardiwala granted the US firm seven days to deposit 10 per cent of the penalty imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
Across the board, brands use influencers like a Bhuvan Bam or Kusha Kapila as the second or third rung of their strategy. The first rung is always a celebrity that has been created outside the Internet, through mainstream media.
The Nightingale of India's 135th birthday is celebrated with a doodle on Google's home page.
In 2023-2024, 95 scheduled commercial banks received over 10 million complaints from their customers. The process of KYC at many banks has become 'HYC' -- harass your customer, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
