At Bing we share a belief that, when information is made freely available, people everywhere become empowered to do extraordinary things. Nowhere is this more true than in areas of the world where people’s access to the internet is mobile-first. Today, Facebook introduced the next phase of Internet.org, a global initiative aimed at making the benefits of the internet more accessible to people around the world and, starting today, Bing is proud to be a part of the effort.

We are proud that Bing is the primary search engine for the Internet.org app in India, which will be made available later today to Reliance customers in India. Together with Facebook, and many others across the industry, we are working to make the internet more accessible through a set of free basic services.

Through Internet.org, Bing will help bring more people online to discover information, knowledge and experience services that they might not have had access to otherwise. Our participation in Facebook’s Internet.org follows the integration of Bing into a range of third party experiences – including Apple’s Siri and Spotlight, and Twitter’s translation services.

Launched in July 2014, Facebook’s Internet.org app will now be available in India, offering a set of free basic services including health, education, finance, jobs, search, communication and local information.

Reliance customers in India can access these services in the Internet.org Android app, at http://www.internet.org/. For more details on the experience and Facebook’s initiative to bring 1 billion people online, head over to Facebook’s blog post.