Google has had a profound impact on the entire Internet ecosystem — from Gmail to Search to Android OS. It has changed the way humans interact and work and play. In an email interview, Rajan Anandan, V-P, India and SEA Sales and Operations, Google, tells BusinessLine , about the journey and the road ahead. Edited excerpts:

In your assessment, what would be the biggest contribution by Google to humanity over the last 20 years?

People interact with Google products across many different platforms, apps and devices — sometimes all in a single day. You expect Google to help you whenever and wherever you need it, whether it’s on your mobile phone, TV, watch, the dashboard in your car, and yes, even a desktop - and we have evolved search to meet the users wherever they’re. For us, it is important that our products deliver the same experience to users across a diverse set of geographies and social contexts — whether it is in the US and in India or Brazil, or Indonesia or Africa where the users have limited connectivity. And this has helped us build locally-relevant solutions in each country where we offer our services — as the need for information is universal but the context is different.

While Google has hit consumer imagination, there have been many misses too. For example, Google has not had much presence in the social networking space with the closure of Orkut. What would be that one area where you think Google could have done better or may not have seen the opportunity ahead of others?

Right from the beginning, Larry and Sergey made this clear in the original founders’ letter: “We will not shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects. Some of our past bets have gone extraordinarily well, and others have not. Because we recognise the pursuit of such projects is the key to our long-term success, we will continue to seek them out. With every product, our teams push the boundaries of computer science with different innovations and these innovations benefit the wider web and also other Google products. While we prioritise resources on our core business and emerging areas with real momentum, we will continue to pursue ambitious moon shoot projects.

As we enter into a highly digital world, there are a lot of concerns around privacy, data protection, internet governance, cyber security and so on. Is there a danger that the Internet growth engine gets disrupted by the unintended negative consequences?

Every wave of technology has always required an underlying sense of responsibility, to help it positively impact as many users as possible while serving their needs and protecting their interests. For nearly two decades, people around the world have used Google to find answers, communicate, build businesses, and more. Our users have long entrusted us to be responsible with their data and we take that trust and responsibility very seriously. Especially as regards to privacy and data protection, there is real momentum to develop baseline rules of the road for data protection.

The next 20 years is going to be more disruptive than the last 20, with new technologies like AI and AR giving wings to unlimited possibilities. What are the big changes you foresee in the way we know Google now?

Providing greater access to information is as core to our work today as it was when we first started. And while almost everything has changed about technology and the information available to us, the core principles of Search have stayed the same: first and foremost focusing on the user, striving to give users the most relevant, highest quality information, adopting an algorithmic approach which has helped us scale, and rigorously testing every change we make.

We are for example using new approaches like Neural embeddings — an approach developed in the field of neural networks — that allow us to transform words to fuzzier representations of the underlying concepts, and then match the concepts in the query with the concepts in the document. This would enable us to understand what a query like “Why does my TV look strange?”, and correctly infer that it is the picture quality being referred to. AI is also being used to dramatically improve our ability to make information more accessible and useful, from predicting areas that might be affected in a flood, or helping you identify the best job opportunities for you. Through it all one thing is clear -- our work here is never done.

Google has been in India for over a decade. How has India contributed to Google's global journey?

Users in India have inspired Google to many different ways over the years — from developing offline Maps to enable uses in locations with limited or unreliable mobile connectivity, to thinking about meaningful and intuitive ways to incorporate local languages into our various apps and services When we launched our operations in India in 2004-05, there were very few people online, PC penetration was extremely low and connectivity was a big constraint. But even back then, India was an important country for us and it was clear that in years to come — India would have one of the largest Internet user bases in the world. So we started investing in India very early, and focussed on discoverability in the Internet context at the time.

Our work was aimed at building experience that addresses the needs, interests, and passions of Indians: The one thing that has remained a constant for us in India is our relentless focus on making improvements that give a billion Indians a rich and relevant Search experience across all languages, bringing the internet alive for everyone.

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