With global access to the internet increasing by the day, the world now has almost 4.2 billion people who have access to the internet. Many of these people access the internet with their mobile phones. In India, for example, 70% of internet access is via a mobile device, according to a report by the telecommunications supplier Ericsson. However, the high cost of mobile data in certain countries means that even this access to the treasure trove that is the internet is still quite limited.
This is why Google’s recent announcement of a service that aims to use less data is particularly welcome. Google recently launched Google Go in South Africa, and the app is now available in 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Google Go’s appeal lies in the fact that is uses a very small amount of data both to download (it takes up less than 5MB of space on a user’s phone, which means that it downloads quickly and doesn’t use a lot of data to download) and to search and browse the internet.
Browsing is less data-consuming thanks to the latest version of Google’s advanced compression algorithm, which uses up to 40% less data to display search results.
In addition, Google Go caches search results on the device, allowing users to re-access search results quickly and even when they’re offline without using data again.
When internet access is limited, Google Go retries failed requests in the background, and lets users know once results are available. Google has improved its voice search with Google Go so it works better in slow connections, and smart word suggestions helps to limit the time spent typing out a search request.
If you’d like to give the latest addition to Google’s offering a try, you can download the app to a device running Android v4.3 (Jelly Bean) and above from the Google Play Store. Google Go will also come pre-installed on all Android Oreo (Go Edition) devices.