
The Google Assistant is going global - artsandsci
https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/google-assistant-going-global/
======
kwijibob
I really hope Google Assistant succeeds. I am totally embedded in the
Android/Gmail/GSuite ecosystem. I want it to succeed. I need it to succeed.

However so far Google voice assistant hasn't worked great for me. Most of the
time it gets it wrong. It is really frustrating while driving. I am a native
English speaker, albeit Australian.

I've made this comment before - it is astounding that Google have banked their
entire reputation on people getting a positive experience through saying "Ok
Google".

Amazon have Alexa. Apple have Siri. Microsoft have Cortana. If any of those
become a negative experience overall, they can just invent a new AI with a new
name.

But at the moment, saying "Ok Google" ends with me having an experience of
frustration or disappointment. This is a big risk with your brand?!

You can breakup with Siri and stay with Apple. It's going to take an amazing
Google Assistant to over come the hundreds of wasted voice experiences I have
suffered thus far.

Good luck, Google.

~~~
saagarjha
> I am totally embedded in the Android/Gmail/GSuite ecosystem. I want it to
> succeed. I need it to succeed.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find this kind of statement concerning?
Google literally controls all of your data and you're forced to rely on them
for services.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
People should ask themselves what would happen to them if Google (or Facebook
or Microsoft or Apple) flagged their account for any reason, be it believing
they're a bot, not liking the content they post, etc. and permanently closed
their account.

How would they recover their access to their other accounts? Do they have
backups of the information they rely on? What is the burden or cost of this
risk?

~~~
mynegation
I did ask myself and I have a plan for each of those things. Except for FB,
because I don’t give a damn.

Basically the plan is to own your domain name, and build things around email
that can be moved to any provider.

~~~
adventured
What do you do for the email address that fundamentally controls the domain
registration?

There's also a high danger in a loop there, where your own domain supplies the
email address that controls the domain.

And if you don't go with that approach, what email provider do you then trust
to provide that external validation point for the domain.

I don't see how you can escape the risk.

~~~
aianus
Why is there danger in the loop, exactly? I’ve never needed access to email to
sign into my registrar (AWS) and change DNS records.

~~~
dorfsmay
Get on a VPN and try to log from there... It'll ask you to verify your login
by sending you a code via email (because it detected your login from a
different country and classify it as "unusual activity".

~~~
aianus
I’ve logged onto AWS from many different countries around the world and have
never seen this. Maybe because I have 2FA enabled anyways?

~~~
dorfsmay
Could because you have 2FA, or could because you have been login from
different countries right from the start (hence considered "usual"). Another
case where I have seen AWS login ask for verification is when email bounces,
which is exactly the case discussed here.

One thing you can do for DNS and your host provider for your mail server is
use a separate gmail account that forwards to your normal domain. It's
unlikely that you'd lose both your DNS / mail server AND access to that
independent gmail account.

I wish service provider for essential services allowed more than one email. A
work around is to setup up more than one "root" account, each setup with a
different email provider.

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cageface
Currently on Android in order to use assistant at all I have to allow Google
to record everywhere I go, every app I launch on my phone, and every web
search I make on any logged in device. This is way more of my privacy I’m than
I’m willing to give up. So until Google allows me to use assistant with some
or all of these turned off, even if it reduces its effectiveness, Google
assistant is turned off on all my devices.

~~~
ENGNR
100% agree, it's unacceptable that it requires so many privileges when they're
positioning it as a key UI for the whole Android experience.

I think the dev community will start looking at hard forks as the new 'true'
path rather than Nexus/Pixel if they continue down this path. It's already
prevented me from buying the new pixel, what's the point of having the latest
vanilla Android if it's going to spy on you anyway

The best way to let them know is to open the Google app, open the menu and
choose 'Send Feedback'

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mszcz
Finally. I'm Polish and I've always felt that my language / location has been
treated as a second class citizen since ever. Only way for me to use Google
Assistant was either by switching to all English or by using some gutted
version when I'm speaking Polish.

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make3
"We’re also making the Assistant multilingual later this year, so families or
individuals that speak more than one language can speak naturally to the
Assistant."

As a French Canadian who changes languages multiple times a day and who refers
to things in both languages constantly, this is really great.

------
ArmandGrillet
Having a multilingual assistant is gonna be so useful, happy to see that
feature coming this year.

The only thing I still miss to use the assistant all day long is offline
routines. I put my phone on flight mode before going to bed and having the
possibility to say "OK Google, wake up" to enable Wi-Fi and have the Google
assistant telling me about the emails I've received during the night would be
great.

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steeve
While this is great, as a french Google Home owner, Google Assistant is way
more powerful in English than in French. The gap is so big and I haven't seen
it improve in the last year...

For instance, multi-user as yet to come to non-English languages, and it's
been out for almost a year.

~~~
ehsankia
While not exactly what you're asking for, they do mention in the article
Multilingual support. So you'll be able to use it in both French and English.

This may solve some problems you're speaking of.

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ggm
I'm glad they've gone for global availability, but I'm still not a fan in my
own personal sense for using this. I cannot entirely rationalise my non-latent
hostility, I just know experientially I don't want an assistant active on any
device I own, or have deployed near me. (I have had it turned on, I did not
like the experience of accidental engagement, or sweeping its sound-captures
when I tested what it had found)

Ubiquitously on, sound-tasting devices do not fill me with glee.

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midhir
I was going to troll and ask would it support Gaeilge but since it still
thinks "Turn the volume down" in a Belfast accent means turn it up max, I
doubt it :)

Not to mention getting it to play Malfeitor by Watain on Spotify...

I actually bought my Google Home in Belfast and brought it to Dublin because
they're still to get in the Republic of Ireland. Yet it seems to find the
southern accent easier and any location based stuff I've used it for here
works fine.

Still feels like magic sometimes.

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tibu
'ensure “Ok Google" and "Hey Google" work when the screen is off, and build
other custom integrations.'

No comment

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's IMO a necessary feature if you buy into the entire concept of voice
interfaces. When I have my phone in my hands (so that I can turn the screen
on), I have much better interfaces available than voice.

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parrellel
...and there's no easy way to get rid of the damn thing.

Some of us really don't want voice controls and always on microphones.

~~~
jmpavlec
Really easy to configure it to only listen when you start it by holding the
home button in.

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suyash
Finally it will be nice to have Google Assistant in Hindi on Google Home.

~~~
dingo_bat
It will feel weird though :) I have never interacted with any computer/phone
in Hindi.

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lgleason
Given how well __cough __the assistant has been able to cope with accents in
English (it hasn 't very well at all) it will be interesting to see how well
this works in practice.

~~~
ariwilson
What do accents have to do with foreign language recognition?

~~~
alphydan
Also, most languages have a wide diversity of accents. Spanish, for instance,
has 18 dialects just in Spain (plus the latin american ones).

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m-p-3
As a multilingual person who speaks two languages on a daily basis, being able
to interact through the language of my choice seamlessly is something I'm
really looking forward to.

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pjmlp
Curious to see if they remember Portuguese is also spoken in Europe, Africa
and Asia, and isn't quite the same as in Brazil.

~~~
rcarmo
The search and advertising teams know that. The voice folk... Not that much,
from my experience with their APIs over the past year.

This is actually quite a significant problem across the board, since Brazilian
Portuguese keeps drifting apart in both formal and informal vocabulary and
grammar. They pretty much walked all over the language accords of the past
couple of decades (both academic and governmental), and some of the more
strait-laced linguists in the Continent wanted to classify it as a creole
(partly to annoy their counterparts in Brazil).

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bokertov
Will there ever be Chinese support?

~~~
eximius
Google isn't neglecting the Chinese. Chinese is just brutal for literally
everything. It's hard for humans, it's hard for machines, it's hard for humans
designing for machines for use by humans. It's hard to read, write, hear,
speak, represent.

Voice UX for English, where linguists and AI and money are being thrown, is
still very much in its infancy. Let's give them a little time.

~~~
danimal88
I suspect this is less about difficulty and more about markets. Simply put, my
guess is that there is a decent reliance on google services which are banned
in China.

~~~
eximius
That may deprioritize it, but it is still the third most spoken language in
the US[1]. Yes, it is less important than many European languages, but it will
still be important even if you completely ignore China.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States)

~~~
dorfsmay
What does Chinese mean here? One of the main Chinese language? Or all Chinese
languages?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language)

~~~
eximius
I was ignoring that for simplicity. Presumably Mandarin, unless otherwise
specified, but who knows. My Chinese is pretty rusty, but Cantonese and other
dialects were always unintelligible to me even when I could speak decently.

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tootie
Do we have any data on the size of this market? I've never found any assistant
to be useful and haven't heard anyone else ever say they used one. This still
feels like a massive dead-end to me.

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pishpash
This is the potential Echo killer. Let's see if it works out for them.

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nfriedly
How long before I can say "Alexa ask Google to..." :P

