The global search engine, Google, recently hosted content creators, developers, media, influencers and educators at a product showcase in Lagos, christened, the Next Billion Users (NBU) House.
Google said it built the house to give users a chance to interact with the products it has developed specifically for the Next Billion Users (NBU) of the internet.
Speaking at the event, Juliet Ehimuan-Chaizor, Google’s Country Director, Nigeria said: “Google’s mission has always been to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
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“Google’s NBU Initiative aims to further its mission of creating a more inclusive internet by creating products and features that are tailored to the needs of people in countries where they experience the internet on a mobile first and have data, network and hardware constraints. Today’s event serves to showcase the progress we have made so far.”
Currently, only 36.1 per cent Africans have access to the internet, according to Internet World Statics.
Google’s Next Billion Users initiative is a company-wide drive to make its products and features more relevant to the emerging markets, taking into account the access challenges experienced by people in Africa.
Featuring a combination of talks and walk-through demos, visitors to the NBU House had a chance to learn about and experience the 8 NBU products Google has announced in Sub Saharan Africa to date – GoogleGo, Gmail Go, Android Go, Maps Go, YouTube Go, Datally, Files byGoogle and GoogleStation.