Google director hints at advanced Assistant tech coming to Apple's iPhone
Google Assistant -- the chief rival to Apple's Siri -- could be coming to the iPhone and iPad in the future, a Google director hinted on Thursday.
Image Credit: Android Authority
"I do not think we have anything to announce at this point," said Google product management director Gummi Hafsteinsson at this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, according to Geekster. "But I think the general philosophy is that we would like to have the Assistant available to as many people as possible."
The rules and architecture of iOS currently don't allow for integrated third-party voice assistants, but Google does have a suite of apps for the platform, and the company's core search app includes Assistant's predecessor, Google Now.
Assistant is typically considered more advanced than both that technology and Siri, in large part because it can interpret context for a more conversational approach. In a common example, users can ask "who is the President of the U.S" followed by related questions, such as "how old is he." Alternatives like Siri and Amazon's Alexa force users to treat every query separately.
Google Assistant debuted with a messaging app, Allo, but is now on the Google Home smartspeaker as well as the company's Pixel phones. Just this month the technology began reaching more Android devices, including smartwatches.
Apple has so far remained mute on rumored improvements that could make Siri more competitive. Any upgrades would likely be announced at the next Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Image Credit: Android Authority
"I do not think we have anything to announce at this point," said Google product management director Gummi Hafsteinsson at this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, according to Geekster. "But I think the general philosophy is that we would like to have the Assistant available to as many people as possible."
The rules and architecture of iOS currently don't allow for integrated third-party voice assistants, but Google does have a suite of apps for the platform, and the company's core search app includes Assistant's predecessor, Google Now.
Assistant is typically considered more advanced than both that technology and Siri, in large part because it can interpret context for a more conversational approach. In a common example, users can ask "who is the President of the U.S" followed by related questions, such as "how old is he." Alternatives like Siri and Amazon's Alexa force users to treat every query separately.
Google Assistant debuted with a messaging app, Allo, but is now on the Google Home smartspeaker as well as the company's Pixel phones. Just this month the technology began reaching more Android devices, including smartwatches.
Apple has so far remained mute on rumored improvements that could make Siri more competitive. Any upgrades would likely be announced at the next Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Comments
I remember when Siri first came out you could ask "What's the weather like in San Diego?" Then follow up with "How about San Francisco" and it would also get the weather. If I remember I thought it was part of the demo.
Actually, Siri does that. The feature is called Sequential Inference and with Siri you can ask "Who is the President of the United States?" and instead of asking "How old is the President of the United States?", you can do a follow up question of, "How old is she?" (To which the answer should be she's 69yo).
That is unless I can get Siri to do it.
"Hey Siri, tell Alexa I need more shampoo."
"Hey Siri, tell Cortana to ask Alexa to Google 'disintermediation'"
Google needs to get their software back on Apple's hardware in a big way. But at this point most iOS users don't care. Facebook's app is more popular than any Google piece of software. Google could have been the software of default for iOS. Maps would be Google's. The search engine would be Google's. Even the digital assistant. But Apple has its own maps and Bing has a very large role. Schmidt decided to function as a spy and steal iOS instead.
I don't care to install anything made by the spyware company on any of my devices.
Google showed their hand 10 years ago when they drove around the world collecting private user WiFi data. And, when confronted with criminal prosecution, claimed they didn't know that they had done it -- and didn't know that they still had those terabytes of stolen info on their servers.
Google exists to collect and sell your information. So why would I pay a premium for an Apple device and then load it with Google spyware?
Anyway while what they did wasn't illegal it certainly was not a good idea no matter what some engineer(s) thought. That's where good managers should have stepped in before it ever got off the ground, but apparently did not. Wired did a really good write-up sometime after the fact.
https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/
I use CarPlay as well with similar poor results. Time to up the game, I know many many people who are lifelong Apple users who are as frustrated as I am with this.