UNIT 3
Text 1
Like the travelling fairs that still roam India, a fashion white bus moves along the subcontinent's B-roads, stopping in small towns for a few days at a time and inviting locals into another world. But in place of tightrope-walking girls and performing monkeys, its main attraction is access to the internet. For some visitors, it is their first time online. The Google Internet bus is a free, mobile cybercafe dreamed up by the search giant and run in association with BSNL, a large state-owned internet service provider (ISP). It has covered over 43,000km and passed through 120 towns in 11 states since it hit the road on February 3rd, 2009. In return for its efforts, Google says it gains a better understanding of their needs. That, in turn, lets it develop products for the potentially huge local market.
Internet penetration rates in the developing world continue to lag far behind those of the west. Last year there were still only 20 internet users per 100 people in the developing world. In the West the figure is 69. But that is changing rapidly. In the ten years to 2010, internet users in the developed economies just about tripled. In the rest of the world, their number grew ten-fold.
Internet users in India make up roughly 8% of the population, or just under 100m people. By contrast, Brazil's is nudging 40%. Google expects the number of users in India to triple over the next three years. The bus set out to take advantage of this vast untapped market—and draw lessons for other emerging markets. According to a Google representative, India represents a microcosm of new users, with a wide range of income levels, linguistic diversity, literacy levels, application needs, demographics and infrastructure challenges. If Google can make it there, it can make it anywhere.
That will only work up to a point. Tracing the bus's route, Google plans to tap India's internal emerging markets: second- and third-tier cities with more (often much more) than 100,000 residents where metropolitan sophistication has not yet taken hold. Yet these urban centers, even combined with India's monsters, still make up only a third of the population. The rest of India lives in villages.
It is there that the government has focused its efforts. In a series of separate but linked programs, the state is erecting a public information infrastructure. The first step is to install fiber-optic broadband connections to India's 250,000 administrative areas, or village councils. Other goals, which the government has outlined in a white paper, are even more ambitious. Google and the government share the same ultimate goal. "We are trying to democratize information," says Sam Pitroda, an Indian innovator, who advises India's prime minister on public information infrastructure.
1. We learn from Paragraph 1 that the Google bus______.
[A] shows residents animal performances online
[B] mainly travels around in Indian metropolises
[C] has not obtained immediate benefit by now
[D] is supported by the local network operator
2. The figures are quoted in Paragraphs 2 and 3 to show that India______.
[A] falls much behind in the popularization of the internet
[B] lacks various knowledge about the internet
[C] should learn from those highly developed countries
[D] would be a promising market for Google
3. It is suggested in Paragraph 3 that in India______.
[A] government should learn from Brazil's advanced experience
[B] lower-income families could not afford the internet
[C] well-educated Indians would be Google's first target group
[D] new internet users differ from each other in various aspects
4. In the author's opinion, the popularity of network in India brought by Google bus is______.
[A] special
[B] limited
[C] immediate
[D] dramatic
5. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that Indian government______.
[A] endeavors to popularize the internet in its rural areas
[B] has already installed broadband connections in the countryside
[C] is too ambitious to achieve its ultimate goal
[D] is working hard to broadcast the idea of democracy