In India, you don’t need a Google phone to have a Google Assistant

Enlarge / Google Assistant isn't just for smartphones anymore-at least, not in India. (credit: McKay Savage / Flickr)

India is an enormous developing market for international companies like Google-who list Hindi as the second most-used Google Assistant language, after English-but many of those potential Indian customers don't have smartphones and may frequently be in areas with little or no data coverage. Today, Google announced a partnership with telco carrier Vodafone Idea that brings the Google Assistant to those users by way of a simple, toll-free dial-in service.

Indian users can now call 000-800-9191-000 and interact with the Google Assistant entirely by voice in either English or Hindi, with other language support planned over time. Most of the standard "Hey Google" functionality is available-you might ask what actress played a particular movie role, who sings a popular song, or where to find a nearby store.

This version of the Assistant isn't tied to any individual user's Google account, so it can't do things that require personal data access, such as creating a calendar event or calling a friend. Whether this is a bug or a feature is left as a thought exercise for the reader-Incognito Mode Google Assistant, anyone?

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