Google’s ‘Neighbourly’ app expands to five more cities

After the successful launch in Mumbai and Jaipur, Google is bringing its Neighbourly app, to five more Indian cities. Starting today, people in Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Mysore, Vizag, and Kota, will get access to the app, following enthusiastic support from locals who joined the waitlist to bring Neighbourly to their city.

Since its launch, Neighbourly has helped people in Mumbai and Jaipur find answers to all types of local questions — be it local shopping, fitness inquires, food recommendations or tuition centers. When asking, 20% of people tap to speak their question and each question [spoken or written] gets an average of four relevant, trusted answers.

The launch in these cities follow 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. The response was encouraging — especially among women, students and daily commuters — and people appreciated using their local language to ask questions to their neighbours and sharing their own knowledge with others. 

Josh Woodward, Group Product Manager on Google’s Next Billion Users team, said, “We’re seeing people in different age groups in Mumbai and Jaipur use the app in interesting ways to find answers to everyday questions in their neighbourhood. With Neighbourly, we are able to address the local information needs of India’s fast-growing internet users in their neighbourhood. We’re excited about the adoption and early engagement and are looking forward to providing a useful experience to people in five new cities across India.” 

The latest version of the app also includes three updates:

  • Enhanced voice input — Since 20% of users tap to speak a question, we’ve improved the voice input experience with better controls so you can ask and respond to questions in your spoken language.
  • Quick replies — When people ask a question, sometimes they want to clarify something about an answer they received. That’s now possible with the inline reply feature.
  • Similar answers — Some neighbours have asked a question and received multiple similar answers, so this new update will be able to detect and group similar answers so it’s easier to find them.

The beta version of Neighbourly is available today on the Google Play Store for all smartphones in Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Mysore, Vizag, and Kota running Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) and higher.

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