
The next billion users are the future of the internet - artsandsci
https://www.blog.google/topics/next-billion-users/next-billion-users-are-future-internet/
======
Barrin92
I think the first and last point are fairly straight forward, but I'm still a
typing believer. I don't think that natural language or other interaction will
replace the written word.

Typing is faster than speaking and less disruptive. I can't really imagine how
everybody on a train in Delhi is going to talk to their digital assistants
without a noise proof helmet on their head. (or going crazy)

Also we've found many ways to condense information in written form. I can
write "IIRC" but it's hugely uncomfortable to speak this way. You can't use
smilies or emojis either when talking. In a way natural language is much less
feature rich.

~~~
jasonvorhe
People claim that same about command line interfaces (and they are mostly
right about them being more functional) but they are not the interface the 99%
is going to operate their computer with.

Voice will be the next GUI.

~~~
Joe-Z
>Voice will be the next GUI.

If we're talking really sophisticated interfaces like in "Her"[0] I agree. If
the interface is working so flawlessly, it's difficult to see why you'd still
want to occupy your hands with querying some knowledge base, composing blog
posts/letters, etc.

However, I don't think we'll get there with current technology. When I think
of the often awkward and cumbersome interactions I have with Siri, I find it
really hard to imagine how this will evolve to a 'I don't need to worry about
this at all anymore'-level in the next 5, 10, maybe even 20 years.

I suspect the giants of today won't be around anymore when truly voice-
controlled interfaces come around.

[0]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

~~~
nitrogen
_...it 's difficult to see why you'd still want to occupy your hands..._

Bandwidth. You have several degrees of freedom with each hand, with each
finger. You have one linear stream with voice.

Latency. You can flick a switch in a few milliseconds, but saying "turn off
the lights" or "lights off" takes half a second or more.

Privacy. You can overhear a voice command. You can't overhear (very easily) a
buttonpress or touchscreen swipe.

Accuracy. Even with perfect voice transcription, people misspeak easily more
than they mistype. And mistyping can be corrected within a few letters, while
misspeaking will require interrupting the stream to switch the voice UI into
editing mode or something.

~~~
Joe-Z
See, but you're still thinking in current voice-interface terms. If I want to
edit something that I "misspelled" (if this will even be a problem, since you
are _talking_) I'll just tell my digital secretary "errr, I meant <x>" and it
will know what to do.

Same for turning off the lights: Sure, it's faster if you only consider the
flicking of the switch. It's another thing if you also incorporate the time it
takes you to get up from your couch/bed/wherever you are without a light
switch in arm's reach.

You definitely have a point with privacy though. Also, the volume of all
people on a train talking to their smart assistants (though the question
remains if this is really so much different from people talking to other
people on a train).

EDIT: I misread your point about mistyping vs. misspeaking. Still, the
interface I'm talking about does not work in modes. It's able to truly
understand you and interpret your commands appropriately.

------
tribune
Google (and especially Facebook) are reaching a point a where they need these
next billion, and the billions after that if there's anyone left, to grow
their businesses. I would wonder about the financial value of these new users
to the companies, though. I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but the
first billion users are FAR more valuable to them than the "next billion"
described in this article. Their revenue models are based on advertising, and
the first billion live mostly in developed countries with have high spending
power, and are therefore worth more to advertisers. The "next billion" may be
part of an emerging global middle class, but currently and for the foreseeable
future will significantly lag the first billion in purchasing power and
therefore dollar value to advertisers.

~~~
whack
What you're saying is true today, but not in the future. China's GDP is
expected to surpass American GDP in the next decade, and India will follow
suit in another ~3 decades. The combined South-American/African markets will
likely surpass North America in the 21st century as well. Not because of any
special merit on their part, but simply because their population exceeds
America's by a factor of 3-4.

If you're a company like Google, that is well established to last for another
couple decades, you'd be foolhardy not to ride this massive wave.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
> China's GDP is expected to surpass American GDP in the next decade, and
> India will follow suit in another ~3 decades

Right but aggregate GDP is not as important to these companies as GDP per
capita.

> If you're a company like Google, that is well established to last for
> another couple decades, you'd be foolhardy not to ride this massive wave.

Actually I'm pretty sure the big tech companies can make most of their revenue
from high GDP-per-capita users. Not saying this is the moral choice, but
financially I'm not sure that these less wealthy users will move the needle
appreciably for the giants.

~~~
whack
Sure, one wealthy consumer is more lucrative than one less-wealthy consumer.
But what companies really care about is market size, which is number-of-
consumers * per-customer-value. Ie, aggregate GDP. This is why Walmart is
worth so much more than Macy's, despite their customers having a much lower
income.

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wufufufu
The voice-only stuff is just building AI for the sake of it and romanticizing
accessibility. What's actually going to happen is the younger generation in
these countries will adapt to current technology and won't be caught dead
asking their phone "Do I need an umbrella in Delhi today?". Voice interaction
alone cannot possibly be the most optimal method, and Indian/Chinese companies
that are more in touch with the market will define what mobile interaction
looks like in the future.

------
cryptoz
Google is all talk here and the technology they are talking about produces far
worse results than a static display like the "web" used to be.

> for example, asking “Do I need an umbrella today in Delhi?” rather than
> typing “Delhi weather forecast.”

I routinely ask Google in the USA, "will it snow tonight?" and it is nearly
always wrong. I don't mean that the data it accesses is wrong, or that the
prediction was wrong. That stuff is usually right. I mean that Google will
read the weather forecast's 45% chance of snow and then it will say
confidently, "No, it will not snow tonight" as there is a near-blizzard taking
place outside my window (because the snow was not "scheduled" to start for
another 20 minutes, at a 45% chance, despite the fact that the snow is plowing
down outisde). Or if there is a 100% chance of snow for 15 hours in a row, and
it starts at 1am, but you ask at 11:55pm if it will snow tonight, it will say
"No it will not snow tonight."

Or if it is going to snow between 1am and 5am and you ask at 11:55pm the night
before if it will snow tomorrow, it will say "No". You have to ask, "Okay
Google, will it snow early in the morning tomorrow?" if you want to know if it
will snow overnight.

Google's example query for the Next Billion needs work. "Okay Google, Weather
forecast" and then reading the results like on the web produces a 100x faster
experience sometimes with much much much better results.

(Aside: has it snowed even once at Google HQ since it was founded?)

Edit: And don't get me started on temperature. On the Home Mini, "Okay Google,
what temperature is it?" .... "35." 35 what?! Yes I know you have a settings/
units preference somewhere that I cannot see or access right now (that's why
I'm asking the magic box for the answer!). But 35 is not a temperature, unless
you are giving it to me in Kelvin and choosing to not say the unit, which is
WTF too.

~~~
Siecje
The other day I heard my brother say "Set alarm for 3:15" instead of "15
minutes from now" and when I asked him why he said that latter required Google
Now which required additional permissions, so he would rather figure out the
time to ask for rather than accept additional permissions.

If you say "Set alarm for 7", it will do 7pm, even if you use 24 hours time.
And I know no one says 19 o' clock when speaking but it is interesting.

"Set alarm for 7 tomorrow" is 7am.

~~~
kageneko
Our Echo is basically a glorified alarm clock/weather checker/music player. If
you just give it a number, it'll ask you to clarify if you mean morning or
afternoon.

"Set alarm for 7"

"Do you mean 7 in the morning or 7 in the afternoon?"

"AM"

"Setting alarm for 7 AM."

------
kraig911
We've got a lot to fix before we worry about the next billion. Language
Processing isn't up to task. AI driven UI's generally suck and TBH people only
use the internet when they have to I feel (around under a certain income
level). It's interesting the amount that people will interact with their
handset based on it's price. Look at app installs on handsets with a net cost
over $350 and they install apps and do a lot. Less than that it's just a phone
that takes pictures with email. (this being a huge approximation but I hope
you see my argument)

Everything on the internet is also becoming like everything on TV/print it's
just the same dribble. Once when there was a sense of community now resides a
vast echo chamber.

~~~
adamsea
"I fight for the users!" ;)

------
pessimizer
The author's photo is 3 megabytes, and the two even more tiny images attached
to the articles at the bottom of the page are each about 3 megs. The next
billion users, especially of they're on mobile, shouldn't have to use that
kind of bandwidth for non-informational embellishments on a static blog.

------
staplers

      the fact that typing is difficult for people who never grew up with a computer keyboard
    

This is something I had not really considered in regards to "digital
assistants". I abhor them with a passion but can understand their usefulness
and desirability in this perspective.

------
itpragmatik
Maybe tangential question - but are there any open source/paid well documented
text-to-speech libraries for Indian languages?

------
throwawayrp
Even with voice-only stuff, isn't asking "Delhi weather forecast" much simpler
than asking "Do I need an umbrella in Delhi today?". This doesn't sound right
to me. Even if people are using the longer form that may be because of initial
barrier and lack of training. Once they realize that they can get quality and
accurate search results just by speaking keywords, they will switch to using
keywords.

~~~
adrianmonk
It's not only simpler, it's also more reliable. If I ask Google Assistant
about the weather in the afternoon and it's 60F, it tells me the weather is
great. But that's not the whole picture because if it's 60F now, it may be 50F
or 45F in just a few hours. In which case, even though 60F fits some people's
(not my) idea of great weather, I need to take a jacket and/or sweater with me
when I walk out the door.

Point being, the AI doesn't know why I'm asking. It could make some reasonable
guesses, but currently it doesn't even do that.

I could deal with that by learning the whole landscape of that it guesses
about my question, when it's smart and anticipates my needs and when it
doesn't, when I can and can't rely on it to do the right thing magically. Or I
could just learn how to ask the question the way it needs me to, and that is a
lot less to learn and worry about.

------
zwieback
Maybe a quibble but to me "internet" is fibre lines, cell towers, network
protocols, etc. aka infrastructure

What rides on top of the internet is what will change with the next billion
users but the infrastructure will stay more or less the same. Also, just
because the developing world works differently doesn't mean I'll throw away my
keyboard.

~~~
fjabre
It's a 20th century mechanical device and still the gold standard for
transferring data from a human's brain to a computer.

Mobile is not a replacement for that, yet.

------
polskibus
I agree but we have to regulate current behemoths better and democratise
access to attention economy.

------
sexy_seedbox
> You should not have to learn English to use the internet.

But you need to learn it to program the internet. Get your muscle memory
familiar with the hundred+ year old QWERTY layout.

------
zelias
I wonder if this means Google will begin developing features for the "next
billion" at the expense of the "first billion"

~~~
rvo
Author of the post says

> The next billion users are not becoming more like us. We are becoming more
> like them.

If we are to take his words on face value, then I would imagine so ...

------
zanny
> We are becoming more like them.

Rather than understand and control our technology, we are forfeiting privacy
and determinism to global megacorps larger than half the nations on Earth
while they figure out what you _should_ want rather than doing what you _do_
want.

Lets just deep dive how horribly dystopic the "dream" is of the Brazillian
cellphone user in 2022:

Proprietary mobile handset manufactured in Chinese sweat shops with pre-
installed state backdoors that the user has no idea about because they don't
even know what a computer is. But the state agents that can on-demand turn
their microphones and cameras on to spy on them, and their ISPs recording and
mining all their communications are fully aware of what they are doing.

Said device will be solid plastic bodied with no removable battery, such that
battery replacement requires a solder gun and a semester of community college
engineering to accomplish. If any individual part breaks, its live with broken
hardware (cameras, gyros, gps, wifi, damage the screen, etc) because costs to
repair are so catastrophically high or near impossible to do and parts are
made unavailable on purpose that the device is designed to be disposable, to
rot in a landfill where it can leak toxic chemicals from its manufacturing
into the soil and air.

Locked bootloader to prevent anyone from running the software they want to on
hardware they own. No documentation on how that bootloader works, no ability
to payload alternative software from ROM. The SoC is proprietary, the baseband
is a trade secret, nobody can operate their own cellular network because all
the IP is top down policed by the state and privileged ISPs.

Kinda-open base OS. I'm still to this day not sure how Google messed up making
Android a proprietary hellscape in the early days, but its unlikely Android 12
will have a new kernel or bionic / other base userspace. However...

Wholly proprietary app stack. Google apps are all proprietary, Google Play
Services control about 80% of the functionality of the device, from poweron to
shutdown everything is logged and sent to Google - GPS positioning, website
browsing, microphone recordings, photos and videos taken, and all touch events
/ key presses.

Social media / ad farming shoved down the throat from day 1. Preinstalled
Facebook, Instagram, maybe Twitter and / or Snapchat on the homescreen. No
instruction manual on the technical details of how the device works. No means
to even _know_ you can or how to _program_ the device yourself. No IDE, no
compiler, no shell. No ability to install apps outside the Google Play store
without knowing to navigate settings to toggle off the app lock.

And how would you even begin to start searching for information on the device
you have? Oh right, Google. Who modifies your search results based on what
they _think_ you need, rather than what you _know_ you want.

Its entirely meant to predate off the poor and ignorant. They aren't worth
much to global corps, but advertising is damn good at operating on fractions
of a cent, and they are already doing a good job draining the creative and
emotional health of the first world into addiction rattled social hell.

And really, nothing summarizes more how horrible this is than in how they want
you to use Google Assistant as your input - yes, Ma Google is here to record
_everything you say_ and interpret the best thing to give you based on your
words since you _cannot directly interact with the device because you are
illiterate_. You have to use our proprietary remote listening service to _use
your computer_.

Risc V save us.

~~~
nathanaldensr
It's comforting to see that someone other than me sees the future as this
dystopic. I don't _want_ to, of course, but I've gotta prepare my two young
sons for what I feel their most probable future is.

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account0099099
Great, the people late to the game, and are here just to get on facebook are
the "future" yay.....

~~~
pwaivers
Facebook has actually done a lot of work to reach the "next billion users".
See
[https://info.internet.org/en/impact/](https://info.internet.org/en/impact/).
They want to make Facebook essentially a portal to the internet for people in
poor countries.

~~~
cryptoz
Facebook's efforts in that are self-serving and mean-spirited. Connecting
people to your platform and hiding the rest of the internet while telling them
they should love you just isn't right - and it's not done to help them, it's
done to make Zuck more money.

See "Facebook and the New Colonialism",
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/faceb...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/facebook-
and-the-new-colonialism/462393/)

~~~
pwaivers
I agree with you. While it may look altruistic on the surface (providing free
internet to the less fortunate), they are actually creating monopoly on
Internet for all future users. They can easily cut out competition.

