Technology

Google has lit the news canon at its annual India event which takes place in New Delhi today. The search giant announced changes to its Tez payment service, and it has alsointroduced a subtle AI-powered feature for its Google Go search app: website reading. You can bet these are the first of many product announcements to come today.

The U.S. firm introduced Google Go — which is essentially a data-light search app for emerging markets — last year, and this new feature is designed to increase its appeal across India, particularly for non-English audiences.

A quick refresher: Hindi and English are the official national languages of India, but its billion-plus population is hugely diverse with more than 20 other languages recognized. The majority of those living in urban India are comfortable with English, but companies are increasinglyaware that they need to cater to other tongues in order to offer even basic online services to the rest (majority) of the country.

Google isn&t alone in adopting this approach — it is actually a relative laggard — but now it is trying to help translate the web with this new Google Go feature.

Google said the addition can make website reading just like watching TV or listening to the radio. The feature reads out text in one of 28 supported languages whilst highlighting each word on the page as it goes. The firm said it uses AI to seek out the most important information on a web page, and also to play it back in each language.

There are obvious use cases for activities that pull attention away from reading, such as cooking, but more widely the feature is seen as part of Google Gogeneral approach to making information more accessible to those who are relatively inexperienced when it comes to using the internet.

&The new feature is inspired by user research in India,where we heard from people how important it is tounderstand information effortlessly. Especially forpeople coming online for the first time, consuminglong-form text on a small device can be difficult andtime-consuming. With this new feature, you can justpress play and follow along,& the company wrote in a statement.

It added thatit is looking into ways to add the feature to other Google apps in the future, so stayed tuned.

Google wants to make the transition back into civilian life smoother for U.S. military veterans by adding tools that help them find jobs or promote their businesses.

One new feature is an initiative of Grow with Google, the companycareer development program. It helps veterans discover job openings relevant to the skills they learned while serving by entering the phrase &jobs for veterans& into Googlesearch engine along with their military job codes. Employers and job boards can also enable the feature on their own sites by using GoogleCloud Talent Solution, a machine-learning based job search platform.

In a Google announcement, Matthew Hudson, a Google Cloud program manager and former Air Force civil engineer who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote that veterans often miss out on opportunities because &there isn&t a common language that helps recruiters match a veteranexperience with the need for their skills and leadership in civilian jobs. As a result, 1 in 3 veterans—of the roughly 250,000 service members who transition out of the military each year—end up taking jobs well below their skill level.&

For veterans who founded, own or lead a business, Google has added a new attribute to help identify them on Google My Business, Google Maps and mobile search listings. In a blog post, Google data scientist and former U.S. Army staff sergeant Sean O&Keefe wrote that more than 2.5 million businesses in the U.S. are majority-owned by veterans. The &Veteran-Led& attribute badge will appear on Google business listings alongside other attributes like &Has Wifi& or &Family Friendly.&

The company also said Google.org, its charity initiative, will grant $2.5 million to the United Service Organizations (USO) to provide IT training, career support and Google Support Professional Certification, a course designed to prepare people for entry-level IT support jobs.

Toyota is investing $500,000 (about £390,000, AU$680,000) in Uber's self-driving car business, helping the ride-sharing company gain an advantage over rivals including Tesla and Audi in the race to bring autonomous vehicles to the world's streets.

The companies intend to pool their expertise and technology, and hope that Uber customers will be able