According to an investigate organization StatCounter, India is one of the largest markets for Google, with over 100 million users. On an average, a normal Indian user spends about 2.5 hours each day on Google websites, including Gmail, Google+, YouTube and more. That said, the Internet connectivity speed in India has always remained low. The country is ranked 112th globally in internet speed and is not chosen as a location by Google for its servers due to hot weather.
However, after the statement issued by Lalitesh Katragadda to the Economic Times Wednesday, things are expected to change. The country head, India products at Google, said,
“Internet connectivity speed in India is not very high, and so the new data centers will be crucial to this market due to its proximity”.
Google New Asia Data Center
Google’s new data centers in Asia that were constructed earlier in 2011 are scheduled to go operational this year. Countries like India which are located close to the data center would surely enjoy the Internet giant’s services, including Web search and YouTube videos, at faster speeds. “The proximity of the data centers could result in Google services becoming 30% faster”, said Raj Gopal AS, managing director at Bangalore-based NxtGen Datacenter & Cloud Services.
Google kicked off construction of its first Asian data center in Hong Kong, early December 2011. It was expected to start functioning in early 2013. Until now, Google was extremely secretive about its data centre locations but has now become more open to discussing details. Outside Asia, Google has seven data centers in the US, and one each in Finland, Belgium and Ireland.
The Internet giant has not specified the deadline for completion of its Hong Kong data center, says The Economic Times. Some Google services such as YouTube and Google Hangout cannot be accessed in India at optimal speeds still. With the new centers, time taken to access these services will reduce dramatically and will only help in increased adoption of Google services.
