Google to Open 4th Safety Engineering Center in India by 2025

New Delhi, Oct 3 (PTI) At the 10th edition of the Google for India event on Thursday, the big tech announced the launch of its new Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in India, aimed at building and advancing security and online safety products and solutions.

Set to open in 2025, this centre will be the fourth of its kind globally, following similar establishments in Dublin, Munich, and Malaga.

"The India GSEC will bring in our best-in-class safety engineers in India, local policy experts, government partners, and academia to tackle India's unique challenges. We'll focus on protecting users from threats like scams and fraud, bolstering enterprise and government security, and advancing cutting-edge research and development," said Snigdha Bhardwaj, Director, Search and Generative AI Trust Strategy, Google.

The centre will focus on developing security products tailored to the needs of Indian users, addressing issues such as financial fraud that have surged with the rise of digital payments in the country.

"This is the fourth that we are doing globally and we are happy that India will be hosting one and uniquely solving for online safety of users in India... not just users, also safety and security of businesses, and public sector... all this will happen... a lot of work is being done with academia and experts on research and development side. So multi-year plans there," Google India MD Roma Datta Chobey told PTI.

For the internet to truly serve and empower nearly a billion Indians, it needs to be a safe and trustworthy space, Bhardwaj further said.

"As we look into India's future, our success in the digital age will be determined not just by how fast we adopt the new technologies, but by how well we protect and nurture the trust that underpins this ecosystem," she said.

She elaborated on how Google is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to strengthen and mitigate protective measures, including automatically detecting and blocking fraudulent activities.


"With more people using digital payments than ever before, we are focusing on proactive mitigation on Google Pay, powered by our cutting-edge AI and ML models. Since last year, we've prevented scams worth over Rs 13,000 crores and displayed 41 million warnings for fraudulent activities and transactions to safeguard just Indian users," she said, adding that Google has removed over 170 million policy-violating reviews on Google Maps globally in 2023.

These numbers represent more than just data, they represent lives protected, businesses safeguarded, and trust preserved, Bharadwaj said.