Google is on a high in India. As the company begins work on a fresh investment plan and gets closer to exhausting its $10 billion India Digitisation Fund, its otherwise dream run seems to be running into a regulatory maze. The company was in 2022 penalised heavily by CCI for abuse of dominance and monopoly in running Android operating system and app aggregator 'Play Store'. Also, the growing cases of misinformation, fake news, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), AI and algo bias - and now deepfakes - have got the government into action as it takes on social media and tech companies such as Google for failing to act effectively. Sanjay Gupta, Google's India country head, says the company remains committed to the market, and rather looks forward to regulations around many issues such as deepfakes and AI. "It is important to have the guardrails... Anybody who cares for the society would be supportive of regulation," he tells TOI in an interview. Excerpts:
How do you see the prospects for Google?
When we look at India, this is really one of the most critical markets for Google. There is an opportunity in India because it has a young population, unlike most of the world. We have one of the youngest populations here, very adaptive and open to change, open to experimentation, and therefore picking up things quickly. As a society, we are very optimistic. Another reason why India's digital revolution is very different from the rest of the world is also because of the digital public infrastructure (DPI) and things like UPI, and ONDC... In 2020, we had announced $10-billion India Digitisation Fund and we continue to be bullish about investing more in India. India also has some of the best engineers in the world. If you look at AI & ML (machine learning), India has the second highest talent pool in the world after the US. While your business grows in India, tech companies like Google also face increased regulatory scrutiny on issues, such as, misinformation, CSAM, algo bias, data privacy, and now deepfakes. It seems that companies are averse to being regulated? At Google, we are not just open, but are supportive of regulations. People today learn digitally, people work on digital, people transact money on digital, people are doing their health records digitally. It has to be regulated. So, regulation is important. It provides the guardrails. And, in a society where out of a billion potential users, 600 million are new to the internet, we need to safeguard them. We are deeply supportive of regulation, and enablers of regulation... regulations are core to running a good ecosystem in any country... In any case, we follow the law of the land, come what may. In my mind, regulation should also ensure that we have an open ecosystem. We should regulate the outcome but not the innovations. The government has been very thoughtful in the regulations which have come so far. So, I do think it's a very collaborative and constructive conversation around regulations.
How do you see the prospects for Google?
When we look at India, this is really one of the most critical markets for Google. There is an opportunity in India because it has a young population, unlike most of the world. We have one of the youngest populations here, very adaptive and open to change, open to experimentation, and therefore picking up things quickly. As a society, we are very optimistic. Another reason why India's digital revolution is very different from the rest of the world is also because of the digital public infrastructure (DPI) and things like UPI, and ONDC... In 2020, we had announced $10-billion India Digitisation Fund and we continue to be bullish about investing more in India. India also has some of the best engineers in the world. If you look at AI & ML (machine learning), India has the second highest talent pool in the world after the US. While your business grows in India, tech companies like Google also face increased regulatory scrutiny on issues, such as, misinformation, CSAM, algo bias, data privacy, and now deepfakes. It seems that companies are averse to being regulated? At Google, we are not just open, but are supportive of regulations. People today learn digitally, people work on digital, people transact money on digital, people are doing their health records digitally. It has to be regulated. So, regulation is important. It provides the guardrails. And, in a society where out of a billion potential users, 600 million are new to the internet, we need to safeguard them. We are deeply supportive of regulation, and enablers of regulation... regulations are core to running a good ecosystem in any country... In any case, we follow the law of the land, come what may. In my mind, regulation should also ensure that we have an open ecosystem. We should regulate the outcome but not the innovations. The government has been very thoughtful in the regulations which have come so far. So, I do think it's a very collaborative and constructive conversation around regulations.