Google's android gamble with the premium Pixel

After Vamana stepped from heaven to earth with his first stride and from the earth to the nether world with his second, there was no place to place his foot, except on the head of Mahabali. Google has been finding itself in a similar situation. Having dominated the web software and services space with the Google search engine, the Chrome browser and the Android operating system for phones, the company had no worlds left to conquer — except hardware. Last week, it put down its foot on this final frontier — announcing a slew of new hardware products.

At the vanguard, is a premium mobile phone, Pixel. The first handset, designed and developed by Google, sports a set of specifications that make comparisons with the iPhone inevitable, a 5 inch full HD screen (to the iPhone’s 4.7 inch sub HD), 4GB RAM (to iPhone’s 2GB); 12.3 MP and 8 MP cameras, 2770 mAh battery, internal storage with a choice between 32 GB and 128 GB (the iPhone goes up to 256 GB), matching 4K Ultra HD video shooting. Pixel also comes in a bigger (5.5 inch) model called Pixel Plus with a beefed up 3450 mAh battery. The special feature of the phones is the voice-based Google smart assistant, similar to iPhone’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Windows’ Cortana. The Pixel phones will range in price from Rs 57,000 to Rs 76,000 — so clearly, they are not meant for the mass market in a way that the Android operating system and the Google browser were.

The upmarket tilt to Google’s first phone is also apparent in its other hardware launches, a Rs 9000 smart WiFi-enabled speaker called Home that promises to answer all your spoken questions; a Rs 5500 virtual reality headset, called Daydream View and a new version of its video streaming dongle Chromecast, that is updated for 4K (Rs 4800).

This is clearly a new Google avatar, aiming its sights at elite customers for whom paisa vasool is not the prime consideration. Will it find takers in a segment where other brands have had a history of customer loyalty Who knows — and who cares

Make in India, for Bharat Unlike last week’s global announcements, Google’s recent India initiatives are pitched at the aam janata, aiming to touch those with poor internet access:

YouTube Go, is a new for India-only mobile app to load and play YouTube videos smoothly even with cheaper phones and poor net access. It also offers a new feature that lets users share videos with friends and family nearby, without using any data.

After working with Indian Railways to provide Wi-Fi at 400 railway stations, Google has now launched Google Station, which helps service providers rollout fast, reliable and safe Wi-Fi zones. The recently launched messaging app Allo includes a preview edition of the chat-based Google assistant.

The Google Chrome browser now offers an expanded Data Saver mode, to reduce the amount of data the browser uses on Android devices to 67 per cent.

The Android app Google News and Weather has added a new feature called ‘Lite mode’ for people on low-bandwidth connections that keeps the headlines and trims the rest of the components.

Some made-for-India technologies are working elsewhere too. Google created Maps Offline for India — a way to download a map to your phone so you can navigate around town,even without a data connection. But now people around the world, especially in the U.S. and Europe, are using the same offline maps technology.