Neighbourly: Google Launches New Community Q&A App for India

• Google has put a lot of resources into creating apps and solutions for India recently.
• The tech giant released its latest Community Q&A app for India similar to Google Local Guides but as a live Q&A, solution app to help users get quick answers.
• The app allows users to ask locals questions about the neighborhood through text or voice input and it supports English and eight local languages.

With Google putting in a lot of effort into making apps for India Google introduced Neighbourly, a community-based Q&A app that allows users to ask questions to locals and get quick answers. The app focuses on helping people find out more about local places and events. Neighbourly is the tech giant's third app that’s exclusive to India with payment app Tez and food delivery app Areo being released by the tech giant for the Indian subcontinent.

According to Google, the idea behind the app was to help locals share their expertise and help others keep up with the neighborhood. The app can be used with both text and voice input using English or eight other local languages. Google’s voice recognition for Indian languages is surprisingly good with Google Assistant being able to pick up nuances in language quite easily. The app is quite similar to Quora with popular questions being placed higher up in the app’s feed based on votes by users.

Users can see both resolved and unresolved questions through swipe gestures. Users can also check out similar questions and follow them to get notified whenever someone answers them. The app is currently available for Mumbai citizens only, and it should expand to other Indian cities soon. There is no word on when the app will be available for other areas of India or if we will see an international version of the app.

The app requires users to own any Android 4.3 or newer, and Google is taking extra steps to ensure the app does not get flooded with promotional messages or spam. Before using the app, you need to abide by the ‘Neighbourly Promise’ and answer three questions before getting access to the app. Users are requested to flag all inappropriate posts when starting the app for the first time.