Google report: Digital dependence is growing in lockdown

Google has released a report on ‘What is India Searching for?’, the report covers the changing digital behaviours and top five consumer trends which are, ‘The need to be Always on’, ‘Power to know more’, ‘Tap and Transact’, ‘Anything, anytime, anywhere on-demand’ and ‘Optimise, personalise, humanise’.

According to the report, “always-on search” has become an established habit for Indian consumers as they sit at the centre of an endless stream of information. While they may be holding back on any kind of discretionary spending at the moment, they are certainly more active online than ever before, discovering services and products that could satiate their exploratory instincts.

The report reveals how dependence on digital is increasing, time spent on smartphones in week 3 of COVID-19 disruption inched towards 4.5 hours per day, online video accounts for more than 70% of India’s total data usage, 2.5x growth in searches for “Python” making it one of the fastest-growing programming languages. 3x growth in “Data science” and “machine learning” related searches over 2019-2020