GOOGLE’S new local office gave the government a week to celebrate. It was inaugurated at the Prime Minister’s House, where Pakistan and Google signed an MoU three days later. Pakistani students will receive free access to Google AI Plus and Gemini for a year, while Google is targeting 150,000 career certificates in 2026. The two sides will cooperate on an AI Centre of Excellence in Islamabad. These commitments build on a Chromebook assembly line launched with local partners in Haripur in 2025. Google.org has also committed $500,000 to Digital Pasban, which aims to reach 200,000 households with Urdu safety material and workshops.

This is welcome. International technology companies can create jobs, train people and support local developers. But the important question is how this relationship will take shape. The agreement also mentions AI analytics for the Federal Board of Revenue, agriculture, digital payments, and public services. These are no longer workshops or subscriptions. They reach into state machinery and involve data about how citizens earn, spend, own property, and interact with government.

This is where celebration must give way to policy. The government should assess this partnership against five questions: whether it builds national capacity, offers fair economic terms, keeps public data under Pakistani control, protects critical datasets, and guarantees citizens enforceable privacy rights.

The government should assess the partnership with Google against five questions.

The first is whether free access builds capacity or dependence. A year of Gemini may teach students to use an AI tool, but it will not give universities shared GPU clusters, enable local firms to host sensitive........

© Dawn