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Sundar Pichai talks MVNO, Android Pay, Project Titan, more at Mobile World Congress

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Google SVP Sundar Pichai sat down with Bloomberg’s Brad Stone at the Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Spain, and as happens often, he had some pretty interesting things to say. Among other topics, the Chrome and Android lead at Google talked about the company’s goals for improving the world’s Internet connectivity through various projects (including the company’s MVNO plans), Google’s further mobile payment ambitions with Android Pay, how Android will tie into virtual reality, and more…

One of the biggest things Sundar Pichai touched on was Google’s ambitions to bring Internet connectivity to more of the world, and that the company is doing so in three major ways.

The first is Google Fiber’s launch in more urban areas, the second is Project Loon, which is bringing connectivity to rural areas, and the last is Project Titan—which is basically a drone-based extension of Loon. Sundar also announced that its MVNO will be coming at some point in the coming months.

Sundar confirmed the company’s plans for Android Pay, saying that it’s an API layer of Android. With this service, anyone will be able to build into Android Pay APIs, and according to Pichai, it “will have NFC components.”

Google says that they aren’t on the same launch timeline as Samsung is with their recently announced Samsung Pay service, and that Google isn’t necessarily intending to compete.

Finally, some notable tweets from Sundar’s appearance:

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Avatar for Stephen Hall Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.