Google will unveil its ‘Neighbourly’ app, to five more Indian cities. People in Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Mysore, Vizag, and Kota, will now get access to the app. The app, which was earlier unveiled in Mumbai and Jaipur, helps users find answers to all types of questions such as shopping, fitness, food and tuition centres. Google said the launch follows extensive user testing done in the past several months.
“Neighbours are an incredible source of information that just can’t be found anywhere else,” Ben Fohner, product manager, Google’s Next Billion User team, said in an interview. “Whether it’s a recommendation for an art instructor for an elementary age student or a nearby place to get a tire puncture repaired,” he said.
When asking, 20% of people tap to speak their question and each question [spoken or written] gets an average of four relevant, trusted answers. One can ask and respond to questions in her spoken language.
In addition to English, Neighbourly works across eight regional languages: Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, and Malayalam, said Mr. Fohner.
Privacy
Mr. Fohner said Google was committed to ensuring a safe experience for everyone. In the profile, Neighbourly only shows the questions and answers that a user posts in the app. There’s no other information outside like age or background and the users are displayed by the first name only. Neighbourly also doesn’t share a user’s email address or phone number, and there’s no way to message another user directly in the app.
Google said the launch in these cities follows extensive user testing done in the past several months. The dynamics of these cities attracted Google’s Next Billion Users team, and they conducted a series of studies and spoke to locals in neighbourhoods. Google said the response was encouraging especially among women, students and daily commuters. People also appreciated using their local language to ask questions to their neighbours and sharing their own knowledge with others.