Google is looking ahead at its annual developer conference, talking about bringing the internet to the next billion people. The company plans on doing this by utilizing its low-cost smartphone platform, Android One. Android One was introduced last year in India with three OEM partners, and that number has since grown to seven countries with more than ten OEM partners. Of course, Google’s plans for Android One don’t stop there.
The problem is, although folks in developing markets may have access to Android One devices, there are still many connectivity challenges and data costs to overcome. It can even sometimes take a few minutes to load up a simple webpage or a map. To combat these problems, Google is looking to focus on speed, size and connectivity to deliver the best experience to users, no matter where they live.
Starting in Indonesia, Google is rolling out a “light” search results page for users on slow connections. These optimized web pages will be able to load 4x faster, use 80% fewer bytes, and reduce memory usage by up to 80MB.
Google is also rolling out a “Network Quality Indicator” for Chrome in India, which evaluates the quality of the data connection you’re on, and will respond to lower bandwidths to adjust the quality of the webpage. For instance, if users have a slower data connection, the webpage will insert image placeholders instead of taking time to load each individual image. The company is also working to bring offline capabilities in Chrome on Android.
Google has also recently launched “YouTube Offline” in nations such as Indonesia, which allows users to take videos offline for up to 48 hours at a time.
We’ll have more information on Android One in the next few hours, so stay tuned!
…Developing…