Google Assistant standalone iPhone Siri competitor app launching for iPhone [u]

Posted:
in General Discussion edited May 2017
As predicted, Wednesday's tenth I/O conference saw the launch of the Google Assistant voice recognition tool to the iPhone.




The app will be restricted to just the United States at launch, with voice-based queries processed in a similar way to the existing Google search app. Due to Apple's control over the iOS architecture, users will not be able to replace Siri with Google Assistant, and will need to enter the app in order to perform verbal requests.

Other enhancements to the package coming soon include the new Google Lens image processing algorithm, with text interpretation related to location, an "always on" approach, all demonstrated at the 2017 I/O Keynote. The company is adding 10 languages before the end of the year, beyond just English.

Google Assistant is considered to be more advanced than the existing Google Voice Search tool, due to being able to interpret context within a conversational-style query, such as follow-up questions. For example, asking "How old is he" after the query "Who is the President of the United States" would provide the President's age in Google Assistant, whereas competitors typically treat each individual statement as a separate query.

Google initially launched Google Assistant, its next-generation artificial intelligence tool, as part of the Allo messaging app released last year. The "preview edition" of Assistant allowed users to interact with the messaging bot, providing responses to queries within the Allo app as part of a conversational thread.

Google product management director Gummi Hafsteinsson hinted at the possibility of Google Assistant appearing on iOS in March at Mobile World Congress. While not having "anything to announce" at the time, Hafsteinsson suggested "I think the general philosophy is that we would like to have the Assistant available to as many people as possible."

Apple has not stood still with Siri, Google Assistant's main competition, with a string of machine learning and language processing acquisitions suggesting there could be a major upgrade to Siri coming as part of the next major iOS update. Last year, Apple opened up the digital assistant to third-party developers with the release of an SDK, enabling apps to perform actions based on Siri queries, such as payments and sending messages.

Update: The Google Assistant app is now available for download. The app takes 256MB of storage space, and runs on any device capable of running iOS 9.1 or greater.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 24
    fallenjtfallenjt Posts: 4,053member
    No trigger word? No thanks. I thought it can be triggered with "Okay, Google". 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 24
    volcanvolcan Posts: 1,799member
    fallenjt said:
    No trigger word? No thanks. I thought it can be triggered with "Okay, Google". 
    Hey Siri - Launch Google Assistant
    harry wildsmaffei
  • Reply 3 of 24
    harry wildharry wild Posts: 808member
    Thank you, Google for bringing Google Assistant on the iPhone!  Siri is just to error prone and is just to stupid!  Siri has a sassy attitude to it too. Not good for an incompetent voice assistant!
    edited May 2017
  • Reply 4 of 24
    fallenjtfallenjt Posts: 4,053member
    Thank you, Google for bringing Google Assistant on the iPhone!  Siri is just to error prone and is just to stupid!  Siri has a sassy attitude to it too. Not good for an incompetent voice assistant!
    What do you want from Siri? "Hey Siri, please wipe my ass"?
    Muntzwatto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 24
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    FAIIL 

    "Show me a picture of Alexis Texas"  

    "I can do a search for that" 

    Yawn
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 24
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    sog35 said:
    Why I earth would I want to put a Spyware app on my iPhone?

    idiotic
    You wouldn't, but many people are unconcerned with the privacy tradeoff when offered what they view as invaluable services. Prime example of this: Facebook.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 7 of 24
    It's not available in Canada just yet 
  • Reply 8 of 24
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    It's not available in Canada just yet 
    Keep us updated.
  • Reply 9 of 24
    Herbivore2Herbivore2 Posts: 367member
    Google is making a very concerted effort to get their software products back on iOS. 

    Does anyone besides me think that this is highly unusual behavior for a company that touts its mobile OS dominance? How they feel that iOS is going to one day become irrelevant in the face of the onslaught of cheap and commoditized mobile devices running Android. 

    Samsung is rattling the mothership in Mountain View. Google has finally figured it out, but too late. The hardware is of utmost importance. Cheap and commoditized hardware will never compete with a well designed and robust platform. Otherwise the company would be content to build its best software only for the Android platform. After all, Android has 80% of the market. Why would Google even develop for a minority platform with one fifth the marketshare when they own the platform with     nearly four fifths? When Jobs came back to Apple, from Next computer, he had to negotiate with Microsoft to keep Office alive for the Mac. Microsoft had no need to continue development on the Macintosh platform. Now that Google has the dominant mobile software platform, why the need to develop for iOS?

    Google should build an assistant for Amazon's Echo as a skill. It is likely doubtful that anyone would want to use it. I know I wouldn't. And I don't want to put the Assistant on my iOS devices either. 

    Hopefully Samsung does a good job with Bixby and puts the service on their Gear S3 frontier watch. 

    I know that there is a lot of anti-Samsung sentiment on these boards. But Samsung is doing a lot of hard work and building nice devices and components. Google takes advantage and takes nearly all of the profits from the Android platform. Samsung is going to put an end to it. Especially when the company controls the critical hardware components that all smartphones require to operate. 

    It's comical to watch Google struggle with Samsung's ascendency in hardware. Of seeing how the Android ecosystem espoused the superiority of OLED panels over typical LCD ones. Now that Google cannot source them, they are looking at trying to augment LCD technology in order to compete. The Android apologists were sure quick to hammer Apple over the LCD panels with lower resolution. Apple contracting with samsung to source all of the OLEDs that the company can build eliminated any chance at Google even being able to meet the relatively paltry demand for the Pixel. At least the present offerings that come with OLED panels. It is quite doubtful that the next Pixel will even come with an OLED panel at any price. 

    When the next Pixel comes with an LCD screen, it will be quite interesting to see how the Android community responds. My guess is that such a development will split the Android community and split them decisively. In a very destructive fashion. But Samsung will prevail because Google simply won't be able to contract with anyone to build hardware comparable to Samsung, much less Apple. As it is, Samsung produces the best image sensor in the industry. Google's Pixel has the best one that can be purchased on the open market from Sony. Samsung's is better and it isn't available to any other manufacturer. Even Samsung mobile itself has to buy sensors from Sony as they cannot meet the demand for their own devices. Samsung makes the best smartphone CPU of anyone not named Apple. And yes, the Exynos is better than the Snapdragon 835. CPU performance is a wash but the Exynos has a decidedly better GPU and likely better power consumption. Samsung's v-NAND product is the best in the industry. 

    It won't go well for anyone in the Android marketplace not named samsung. LG can build its own phones with OLED panels, but when QCOM melts down, won't have a source of CPUs to compete with the Exynos.  Hence Google's need to move their services back onto iOS. The problem is that most iOS users won't care. Siri will remain dominant. 

    I actually like Samsung. I know DED and others root for the company to fail. But I don't. I am rooting for them to succeed. No one outside of LG had the foresight to invest heavily in OLED. Not even Sony. The development of folding OLED panels will disrupt the mobile computing industry. Samsung is developing that technology. And with Apple's size and profitability, they will have access to the technology. Google, HTC, Sony, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi and the others won't. From the trends, it will take a fortune, a lot of luck and magnificent determination to achieve conventional OLED parity with Samsung. Sony, National/Panasonic, JDI and Sharp are out of the game completely. AUO is barely in the game. LG produces a relatively large number of panels for the Apple Watch. But Samsung display is going to produce tens of millions for the Galaxy S8 and iPhone 8 or 7S depending on how Apple markets the next device. With those numbers, the associated profits and a singular focus on developing the next big thing, Samsung is going to rout the OLED industry. 

    With Samsung's success, Google will be eliminated as a competitor in the mobile OS arena. Apple will then have one major competitor instead of a host of Chinese firms subsidized by their government producing phones selling at losses, gaining marketshare, but with no hope of long term success and driving down profits for the other legitimate manfucturers. Manufacturers which include Apple itself, Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony-Ericsson among others. 

    Apple has major advantages due to their incredible CPU development team. The A10 fusion destroys the competition in single threaded performance. So much so that the Android community has to tout multi-core performance. It reminds me of the day when we Apple users touted dual processor G4 machines having better performance than Pentium processors which were superior in single threaded performance. We were emphatically denounced. But now on a small screen device where single threaded performance is even far more important, the Android types espouse multi-threaded performance. Coding is difficult to optimimize threads to all of the CPU cores, especially when different architectures are involved like the Big.Little ones in the modern ARM designs. It's costly and time consuming. Coding for single threaded applications is far easier. It also provides a superior user experience. But the Android types continue to praise the multi-core performance of the Snapdragon over the A series. It's actually comical. Apple excels and that fact alone guarantees the success of their mobile products. Much like Samsung has essentially no competition for small screen OLED panels, Apple has little in the mobile CPU arena. 

    Apple and Samsung can peacefully co-exist, splitting the profits in the mobile device market. Google will be displaced as Samsung through its stellar components manufacturing dept. takes complete control of the non iOS portion of the mobile hardware market. 

    Google can try to put its software back on iOS devices, but it is going to fail as a long term strategy. Like the situation with Apple maps, there will be no need to use the Google product. Apple will get Siri right and Google assistant will be totally dead in the water. 
    kevin kee
  • Reply 10 of 24
    kevin keekevin kee Posts: 1,289member
    Thank you, Google for bringing Google Assistant on the iPhone!  Siri is just to error prone and is just to stupid!  Siri has a sassy attitude to it too. Not good for an incompetent voice assistant!
    The idea of putting another Google thing, if I could help it, in my iPhone is a blasphemy. I would prefer to Siri or s better Siri rather a junk from Google.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 24
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    US-only (and maybe CA)
    edited May 2017
  • Reply 12 of 24
    Herbivore2Herbivore2 Posts: 367member
    Even the Android community is recognizing the OLED and 3D-NAND (V-NAND in Samsung terminology) shortages. And the fact that Samsung and Apple will take most of the available supply. 

    http://www.androidauthority.com/global-amoled-memory-shortages-predicted-2017-728012/

    There will be panic in Mountain View when Samsung dictates the terms to Google with respect to keeping Android on the Galaxy series of smartphones with the cool foldable OLED panels, generous amounts of memory and the only high performance mobile CPU outside of Apple. 

    That day is coming. 

    As I am saying, the Android community will split and fracture. Those powerful and cheap Android phones are going away. Especially with Samsung dictating the prices on those precious display panels and memory. The non iOS mobile community will have a tough decision to make. Whether to purchase a less capable and more costly Android device with far more software applications or a less costly and far more powerful device with a relative paucity of software applications running Tizen. My guess is that the more powerful and less costly Samsung Tizen device wins out over the likes of Oppo, HTC, LG, Huawei and the like. People love better specs. And they love superior images along with the CPU power to process them quickly and efficiently. And with the move to high end devices running Tizen, the developers will shift their focus off of Android and onto Tizen as the preferred non iOS platform. 


  • Reply 13 of 24
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Herbivore2 said: Google is Doomed
  • Reply 14 of 24
    bestkeptsecretbestkeptsecret Posts: 4,265member



    "Can you stop tracking me?"




     


    singularity
  • Reply 15 of 24
    gatorguy said:
    Herbivore2 said: Google is Doomed

    Yup, with way too many flawed arguments!!!! Even DED cannot beat him, because he mostly uses facts (ignoring the facts which are not helpful to the narrative) and add a bit of color to it.
  • Reply 16 of 24
    Google is making a very concerted effort to get their software products back on iOS. 

    Does anyone besides me think that this is highly unusual behavior for a company that touts its mobile OS dominance? How they feel that iOS is going to one day become irrelevant in the face of the onslaught of cheap and commoditized mobile devices running Android. 

    Samsung is rattling the mothership in Mountain View. Google has finally figured it out, but too late. The hardware is of utmost importance. Cheap and commoditized hardware will never compete with a well designed and robust platform. Otherwise the company would be content to build its best software only for the Android platform. After all, Android has 80% of the market. Why would Google even develop for a minority platform with one fifth the marketshare when they own the platform with     nearly four fifths? When Jobs came back to Apple, from Next computer, he had to negotiate with Microsoft to keep Office alive for the Mac. Microsoft had no need to continue development on the Macintosh platform. Now that Google has the dominant mobile software platform, why the need to develop for iOS?

    Google should build an assistant for Amazon's Echo as a skill. It is likely doubtful that anyone would want to use it. I know I wouldn't. And I don't want to put the Assistant on my iOS devices either. 

    Hopefully Samsung does a good job with Bixby and puts the service on their Gear S3 frontier watch. 

    I know that there is a lot of anti-Samsung sentiment on these boards. But Samsung is doing a lot of hard work and building nice devices and components. Google takes advantage and takes nearly all of the profits from the Android platform. Samsung is going to put an end to it. Especially when the company controls the critical hardware components that all smartphones require to operate. 

    It's comical to watch Google struggle with Samsung's ascendency in hardware. Of seeing how the Android ecosystem espoused the superiority of OLED panels over typical LCD ones. Now that Google cannot source them, they are looking at trying to augment LCD technology in order to compete. The Android apologists were sure quick to hammer Apple over the LCD panels with lower resolution. Apple contracting with samsung to source all of the OLEDs that the company can build eliminated any chance at Google even being able to meet the relatively paltry demand for the Pixel. At least the present offerings that come with OLED panels. It is quite doubtful that the next Pixel will even come with an OLED panel at any price

    When the next Pixel comes with an LCD screen, it will be quite interesting to see how the Android community responds. My guess is that such a development will split the Android community and split them decisively. In a very destructive fashion. But Samsung will prevail because Google simply won't be able to contract with anyone to build hardware comparable to Samsung, much less Apple. As it is, Samsung produces the best image sensor in the industry. Google's Pixel has the best one that can be purchased on the open market from Sony. Samsung's is better and it isn't available to any other manufacturer. Even Samsung mobile itself has to buy sensors from Sony as they cannot meet the demand for their own devices. Samsung makes the best smartphone CPU of anyone not named Apple. And yes, the Exynos is better than the Snapdragon 835. CPU performance is a wash but the Exynos has a decidedly better GPU and likely better power consumption. Samsung's v-NAND product is the best in the industry. 

    It won't go well for anyone in the Android marketplace not named samsung. LG can build its own phones with OLED panels, but when QCOM melts down, won't have a source of CPUs to compete with the Exynos.  Hence Google's need to move their services back onto iOS. The problem is that most iOS users won't care. Siri will remain dominant. 

    I actually like Samsung. I know DED and others root for the company to fail. But I don't. I am rooting for them to succeed. No one outside of LG had the foresight to invest heavily in OLED. Not even Sony. The development of folding OLED panels will disrupt the mobile computing industry. Samsung is developing that technology. And with Apple's size and profitability, they will have access to the technology. Google, HTC, Sony, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi and the others won't. From the trends, it will take a fortune, a lot of luck and magnificent determination to achieve conventional OLED parity with Samsung. Sony, National/Panasonic, JDI and Sharp are out of the game completely. AUO is barely in the game. LG produces a relatively large number of panels for the Apple Watch. But Samsung display is going to produce tens of millions for the Galaxy S8 and iPhone 8 or 7S depending on how Apple markets the next device. With those numbers, the associated profits and a singular focus on developing the next big thing, Samsung is going to rout the OLED industry. 

    With Samsung's success, Google will be eliminated as a competitor in the mobile OS arena. Apple will then have one major competitor instead of a host of Chinese firms subsidized by their government producing phones selling at losses, gaining marketshare, but with no hope of long term success and driving down profits for the other legitimate manfucturers. Manufacturers which include Apple itself, Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony-Ericsson among others. 

    Apple has major advantages due to their incredible CPU development team. The A10 fusion destroys the competition in single threaded performance. So much so that the Android community has to tout multi-core performance. It reminds me of the day when we Apple users touted dual processor G4 machines having better performance than Pentium processors which were superior in single threaded performance. We were emphatically denounced. But now on a small screen device where single threaded performance is even far more important, the Android types espouse multi-threaded performance. Coding is difficult to optimimize threads to all of the CPU cores, especially when different architectures are involved like the Big.Little ones in the modern ARM designs. It's costly and time consuming. Coding for single threaded applications is far easier. It also provides a superior user experience. But the Android types continue to praise the multi-core performance of the Snapdragon over the A series. It's actually comical. Apple excels and that fact alone guarantees the success of their mobile products. Much like Samsung has essentially no competition for small screen OLED panels, Apple has little in the mobile CPU arena. 

    Apple and Samsung can peacefully co-exist, splitting the profits in the mobile device market. Google will be displaced as Samsung through its stellar components manufacturing dept. takes complete control of the non iOS portion of the mobile hardware market. 

    Google can try to put its software back on iOS devices, but it is going to fail as a long term strategy. Like the situation with Apple maps, there will be no need to use the Google product. Apple will get Siri right and Google assistant will be totally dead in the water. 

    There are way too many flawed arguments in your post, with lot of facts mixed in. I find it quite difficult to explain details about those flawed arguments. Rather, I would just mark those flawed arguments in bold. Anything more than that is a waste of time.
  • Reply 17 of 24
    Google is making a very concerted effort to get their software products back on iOS. 

    Does anyone besides me think that this is highly unusual behavior for a company that touts its mobile OS dominance? How they feel that iOS is going to one day become irrelevant in the face of the onslaught of cheap and commoditized mobile devices running Android. 
    It's not unusual at all. When did Google ever think it could ignore iOS? The OS is a means to an end - it wants its services on as many devices as possible no matter who makes them. Samsung is an inevitable double-edged sword - Google needs strong OEMs to bring Android forward but as soon as anyone gets to the point that Samsung has, it'll want to go it alone. The best strategy is for Google to support a wide range of device manufacturers
  • Reply 18 of 24
    Even the Android community is recognizing the OLED and 3D-NAND (V-NAND in Samsung terminology) shortages. And the fact that Samsung and Apple will take most of the available supply. 

    http://www.androidauthority.com/global-amoled-memory-shortages-predicted-2017-728012/

    There will be panic in Mountain View when Samsung dictates the terms to Google with respect to keeping Android on the Galaxy series of smartphones with the cool foldable OLED panels, generous amounts of memory and the only high performance mobile CPU outside of Apple

    That day is coming. 

    As I am saying, the Android community will split and fracture. Those powerful and cheap Android phones are going away. Especially with Samsung dictating the prices on those precious display panels and memory. The non iOS mobile community will have a tough decision to make. Whether to purchase a less capable and more costly Android device with far more software applications or a less costly and far more powerful device with a relative paucity of software applications running Tizen. My guess is that the more powerful and less costly Samsung Tizen device wins out over the likes of Oppo, HTC, LG, Huawei and the like. People love better specs. And they love superior images along with the CPU power to process them quickly and efficiently. And with the move to high end devices running Tizen, the developers will shift their focus off of Android and onto Tizen as the preferred non iOS platform. 




    There are way too many flawed arguments in your post, with few facts mixed in. I find it quite difficult to explain details about those flawed arguments. Rather, I would just mark those flawed arguments in bold. Anything more than that is a waste of time.
  • Reply 19 of 24
    Even the Android community is recognizing the OLED and 3D-NAND (V-NAND in Samsung terminology) shortages. And the fact that Samsung and Apple will take most of the available supply. 

    http://www.androidauthority.com/global-amoled-memory-shortages-predicted-2017-728012/

    There will be panic in Mountain View when Samsung dictates the terms to Google with respect to keeping Android on the Galaxy series of smartphones with the cool foldable OLED panels, generous amounts of memory and the only high performance mobile CPU outside of Apple. 

    That day is coming. 

    As I am saying, the Android community will split and fracture. Those powerful and cheap Android phones are going away. Especially with Samsung dictating the prices on those precious display panels and memory. The non iOS mobile community will have a tough decision to make. Whether to purchase a less capable and more costly Android device with far more software applications or a less costly and far more powerful device with a relative paucity of software applications running Tizen. My guess is that the more powerful and less costly Samsung Tizen device wins out over the likes of Oppo, HTC, LG, Huawei and the like. People love better specs. And they love superior images along with the CPU power to process them quickly and efficiently. And with the move to high end devices running Tizen, the developers will shift their focus off of Android and onto Tizen as the preferred non iOS platform. 



    Do you want Samsung to be the next "Nokia"? Try convincing Samsung executives with your proposal to put Tizen in their "A" series (upper-mid range) phones, leave alone S/Note phones. I am 100% confident, the answer would be "Thanks, but No Thanks". The problem is - you just don't have any clue about Android or Tizen. To top it, you imagine wildly about things which do not exist and make long posts based on those imaginations.
  • Reply 20 of 24
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    Even the Android community is recognizing the OLED and 3D-NAND (V-NAND in Samsung terminology) shortages. And the fact that Samsung and Apple will take most of the available supply. 

    http://www.androidauthority.com/global-amoled-memory-shortages-predicted-2017-728012/

    There will be panic in Mountain View when Samsung dictates the terms to Google with respect to keeping Android on the Galaxy series of smartphones with the cool foldable OLED panels, generous amounts of memory and the only high performance mobile CPU outside of Apple

    That day is coming. 

    As I am saying, the Android community will split and fracture. Those powerful and cheap Android phones are going away. Especially with Samsung dictating the prices on those precious display panels and memory. The non iOS mobile community will have a tough decision to make. Whether to purchase a less capable and more costly Android device with far more software applications or a less costly and far more powerful device with a relative paucity of software applications running Tizen. My guess is that the more powerful and less costly Samsung Tizen device wins out over the likes of Oppo, HTC, LG, Huawei and the like. People love better specs. And they love superior images along with the CPU power to process them quickly and efficiently. And with the move to high end devices running Tizen, the developers will shift their focus off of Android and onto Tizen as the preferred non iOS platform. 




    There are way too many flawed arguments in your post, with few facts mixed in. I find it quite difficult to explain details about those flawed arguments. Rather, I would just mark those flawed arguments in bold. Anything more than that is a waste of time.
    That's the lamest reply I've ever read, either take time to reply or shut up; simple isn't it.
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