
Okay, Google, you officially beat Siri - ccozan
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/24/google-siri/
======
scottfr
The author brings up an interesting example where Google Now provides him a
tool to automatically identify and describe a TV show he is watching at night.
When he later tries to demo this feature to his friend during the day, it
simply does not appear.

The author takes this as an example of Google Now being very smart and
learning from his behavior. It knows he watches TV at night so it provides him
the identification feature during that time period. It doesn't provide it to
him during the day, because it knows he isn't usually watching TV during the
day (at least this is the author's assumption).

I take away a different message from this example and it is part of the reason
I am very skeptical of software like Siri or Google Now.

Fundamentally I believe the one of the most important features of a software
application is that it is predictable. When I do 'X', I expect the program to
do 'Y' always. If it can't do 'Y' because of certain situations, I should get
an explicit, informative error message.

The author's TV example is an illustration of deep unpredictability. It is
quite possible that he is right and there are powerful learning algorithms
driving the Google Now's behavior in this case. But all I see is
unpredictability.

Yes, I want to customize and shape software to my own identity and patterns.
But unless I control that process, I am likely to become very frustrated, very
fast as a software application changes under my feet.

~~~
bilalq
What the author is described is simply Google Now's contextual awareness that
a feature could be useful in a given situation. Even if the Listen to TV card
doesn't appear in Google Now, you can simply say "Ok Google, listen to my tv,"
and it will start listening.

~~~
andrewflnr
Is there a reference for all the phrases it recognizes?

~~~
nirvanatikku
The best list I've seen to date: [http://trendblog.net/list-of-google-now-
voice-commands-infog...](http://trendblog.net/list-of-google-now-voice-
commands-infographic/)

------
microarchitect
I was in Bangalore some weeks ago and I tried the query "OK google, directions
to vidyarthi bhavan." And it worked perfectly. I was amazed!

The first thing that amazed me was that Google understood what I meant by
vidyarthi bhavan! Note vidyarthi bhavan is a generic phrase in many Indian
languages which just means 'student building.' In _Bangalore_ , it refers to a
specific restaurant in Gandhi Bazar famed for its masala dosas. And I bet
there are plenty of people who live in Bangalore right now and don't know
about this restaurant. The contextual knowledge here is amazing. And it wasn't
just geolocation, I was about 15km away from Gandhi Bazar at that point. And
Bangaloreans will know corresponds to an eternity given the traffic situation.
And the software did all this by recognizing a phrase consisting of two words,
both of which are not in English!

That moment was an epiphany for me, it the precise moment that I realized that
personal digital assistants are here, and they _actually_ work.

~~~
glhaynes
Sorry, but I think this is just Google Maps. Sitting here in the USA, typing
"vidyarthi bhavan" into maps.google.com takes me to the one in Gandhi Bazar,
too. Maybe because it has 155 reviews?

~~~
MrHeartBroken
Somebody wrote the following but it is gone now. (Still had it in my other
tab.)

It's actually just plain old web search. Search this on Google
([https://www.google.com/search?q=vidyarthi+bhavan](https://www.google.com/search?q=vidyarthi+bhavan))
or Bing
([http://www.bing.com/search?q=vidyarthi+bhavan](http://www.bing.com/search?q=vidyarthi+bhavan))
or DuckDuckGo
([https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vidyarthi+bhavan](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vidyarthi+bhavan))
or Blekko
([http://blekko.com/#?q=vidyarthi%20bhavan](http://blekko.com/#?q=vidyarthi%20bhavan))
or Yandex
([http://www.yandex.com/yandsearch?text=vidyarthi%20bhavan](http://www.yandex.com/yandsearch?text=vidyarthi%20bhavan))
or Baidu
([http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=vidyarthi+bhavan](http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=vidyarthi+bhavan)).
Baidu is the only place where I saw it being the second result and not the
first.

------
dmerfield
This is an advert.

Marcio Cyrillo is the director of marketing at CI&T, who work for Google:

[http://www.ciandt.com/us-en/about-cit/partnerships](http://www.ciandt.com/us-
en/about-cit/partnerships)

~~~
taspeotis
I thought it was an ad too but there's nothing to suggest they work _for_
Google.

Check the link you posted for evidence they work _with Google products_.

~~~
cyrillo
cheers! i am the author of this article and i work for CI&T, a Google partner
for Cloud Platform. This wasn't an advert. My first article actually defended
Siri ([http://www.uxmindset.com/2011/11/between-
apple%e2%80%99s-sir...](http://www.uxmindset.com/2011/11/between-
apple%e2%80%99s-siri-and-google%e2%80%99s-voice-actions-there-is-wilson/)) and
as a technologist interested in the advances of machine learning, I decided to
compare the two services again, this time pointing out what Google did to
transform voice actions into Google Now and thus to outpace Siri.

Feel free to shoot me an email to cyrillo@ciandt.com if you have any
questions.

------
steven2012
Apple really dropped the ball with Siri. It feels like the upgrade to iOS 7
made Siri slightly worse, and I was hoping for much, much better.

The key use for me is responding to texts or making phone calls while driving.
Being able to say "Call home" is really great, but the really annoying thing
is that it I can't appear to force it to use speakerphone. Why is such a small
feature unavailable to me? Also, the response time for Siri is extremely slow,
and the responses are far too verbose. I wish you could do things like adjust
the speaking speed, etc.

The other thing is Apple should have allowed people to integrate their apps
with Siri, but it doesn't seem like it's possible. I would love to launch some
apps verbally, but Siri isn't useful enough to do that.

Sure, it's clever enough to figure out "I'm locked out of my house" to mean
call a locksmith, like the ad shows, but other than what I mentioned above,
and setting timers and alarms verbally, it has become almost complete useless
to me.

------
kapitalx
I'll share my amazement story also.

I was visiting Hawaii and Google Now popped up saying that there has been an
earth quake in Vancouver and there is an expected tsunami within 2 hours in
Hawaii. I was just about falling sleep at the time. I got up, checked the TV
and sure enough there was an expected tsunami. The expected water elevation
was 3 feet and we were at 30 feet.

Another time it popped up to tell me that my flight was cancelled the day the
Korean 777 crashed at SFO.

~~~
Amadou
The tsunami thing would be less amazing if you lived there rather than being
just a visitor. Tsunamis are a big deal in Hawaii. Growing up there, we had
monthly tests of the tsunami warning system - sort of like air-raid sirens.
They teach tsunami preparedness in the schools and spend a lot of time in the
local history class (hawaiiana) talking about the devastation caused by
tsunamis in the past. I would not be surprised to find out that the engineer
responsible for the tsunami alerts in Google Now was a kama'aina.

~~~
matthewbadeau
Tsunami warnings in Hawaii are broadcast by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
and through NOAA's weather broadcast. The PTWC is based in Ewa, so
_technically_ it's kama'aina. I live on Oahu right now and I've never received
a tsunami warning with Google Now, only with the Wireless Emergency Alerts
(WEA) that are not specific to any carrier or phone. Flood and severe storm
warnings are also broadcast using the WEA.

------
steve19
I find it really creepy. Do a single search for a pop or movie star on
Google.com and it remembers and Google Now alerts you to news about the
person.

I have disabled Google Now and Location Services (the service that tracks your
location and also sucks a lot of battery life) on my phone.

~~~
ccozan
OK, that's a bit creepy, I admit. But for a teenager, could be a great
feature. Honestly, I'd also like to know when <insert some old rock band>
concerts in my area.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
You might wanna check out Songkick:
[https://www.songkick.com](https://www.songkick.com) \- it does exactly that
and it's awesome.

~~~
hnriot
"awesome" ???

I just tried it, for the bay area it said there were 1887 concerts, then gave
me no way to facet the search results by genre, venue etc. I tried the search
box, which, confusingly, is right next to the "sign up as an artist". The
search results despite the bay area being set as my location showed me
concerts in London as the first result.

I wouldn't say songkick is anything like awesome.

~~~
archivator
That's not really the use case. The use case is more along the lines of "I
like this band a lot and would love to see them live but I can't be bothered
to track this stuff", so you go to songkick and it will send you an email when
they announce dates near you. _That_ part is awesome.

Your use case should be accommodated too, granted, but it's not the direction
they're currently headed.

~~~
simoncion
If they haven't really considered that use case, and their service doesn't
handle it well, why on earth do they provide the means to make their service
look bad?

Based on the GP's (and your) report, the search box should be replaced with a
freeform text field or somesuch that lets you input artists you're interested
in, and a button that subscribes you to notifications.

------
voltagex_
I'm frustrated that there's no extensibility - fine Google, you haven't been
able to negotiate with the Neanderthal Australian TV networks for TV guides
[1], but don't just tell me that the "What's on TV" feature isn't available,
let me plug in an XML feed from somewhere or write an app to do so!

[1]:
[http://apcmag.com/Content.aspx?id=3786](http://apcmag.com/Content.aspx?id=3786)

~~~
cloudwalking
I agree that would be a good feature!

Unfortunately Google probably can't ingest the data without the agreement in
place. So unless Google Now actually ran on your phone (it doesn't), you're
outta luck.

~~~
jodrellblank
They can ingest the content of every copyrighted book without prior agreement,
but TV schedule licensing scares them?

------
fpgaminer
I want technology like this in my life. I mean what Google Now ultimately
could become. A personal assistant powered by near-magical machine learning.
But I don't want to sacrifice my privacy to companies that have proven
untrustworthy.

More so than that, I don't want to invest a piece of my life into a service,
when Google has a track-record for either A) abandoning the product, or B)
mucking it up. Let's talk about the future, where Google Now feels like a
human secretary in its capacity for intelligence. One day you ask it to
schedule an appointment for a Friday lunch. Instead of the usual friendly
acknowledgement, (s)he asks you if you'd like to share this appointment on
Google Plus. Suddenly you can't make reservations at a restaurant, without
having a Google Plus profile. They wanted to abate abuse of the system by
linking reservations to real people. Now you have to "fire" your secretary,
and spend weeks training up a new one. And (s)he'll never be as good as the
old one.

Hopefully you understand the point I'm making. It wouldn't be so bad, if it
weren't for the tendency of all these modern services to form their own little
monopolies. Take YouTube for example. I want to switch away from YouTube. But
the content creators I love don't have their content available elsewhere. We
talk about all the freedom our modern internet enabled society brings ... but
yet most of what we create these days gets linked inextricably with some
walled garden.

I want a technology like Google Now, but I want the data it learns to be
stored in an open format which I can port around as I see fit. I want to be
married to my data, not to a service provider.

Having said all that, I know my dream won't come true for quite some time.
Non-trivial technology almost always breeds walled gardens, due to the expense
required to develop and maintain them. We likely won't see open standards here
until the technology is old enough to be implemented well in an open source
project.

~~~
NicoJuicy
They won't abandon Google Now, but i do see the advantage of Google Now as an
open format..

~~~
xerophtye
His point isn't just abandonment. His point is that what if tmrw they
introduce some new restrictions (like the g+ profile needed), that would mess
things up. He doesn't want a situation where he has to comply with google's
whims or be forced to leave the tech he loves. Not to mention all the effort
put into training that tech. So he wants the data google collected on him to
be portable. So that if tmrw he decides to use some other service in place of
google now, he can just take out his data, and plug it into the new assistant.
Now wouldn't that be cool?

PS: i understand google has absolutely ZERO incentive to do something like
this. But hey, just explaining GP's point

------
Ar-Curunir
I just find stuff like this really scary. Google basically knows everything
about this guy's life.

I understand that he isn't personally concerned by this, but I feel that a lot
of people would be scared by things like this.

~~~
kissickas
If you had a secretary, they would most likely know even more about your life,
and you would have to pay them. I don't find it too scary - if it didn't know
anything about me, what use would it be? It could place calls and set alarms
for me, like Siri, but there's no way you can truly call that a "digital
assistant."

~~~
darklajid
That analogy is flawed. A human assistant probably wouldn't store every
information about you forever. It usually is a single person, not a megacorp.
You would pay the assistant as you already stated - the motivation of the
assistant to provide services are clear and well understood.

I agree with the GP, this scares me. I am interested in this technology, but
won't hand over the required information. A 'personal' life tracking/assistant
service would be useful..

------
statictype
My favorite feature is its ability to detect flight schedules based on
e-tickets that have been emailed to me. It's great when I on the phone and see
a reminder about the flight and what time it leaves and how long it takes to
go to the airport.

~~~
jordanthoms
What's especially awesome, is if other people travelling with you forward on
their confirmation emails as well, it'll aggregate them and show everyone with
tickets + seat numbers.

~~~
M2Ys4U
awesome? That sounds honorific.

"OK Google, remove all semblance of my privacy"

~~~
Cederfjard
Your intention is still clear, but I think you meant to write "horrific".
Otherwise I'm a bit confused. :)

~~~
M2Ys4U
Oops. yes, you're right.

------
ta_privad523
Reading this, I'm happy I never fell for the apple or google phone trends.
These devices are intrusive snitches into your life constantly watching you,
where you go and what you do and reporting to notoriously dubious giant
corporations behind them with privacy and basic human rights respect issues.

How long before those "personal assistant" start influencing and controlling
our decisions then our lives ? The stasi or the eye of moscow would have love
theses devices and probably made them mandatory.

[http://i.imgur.com/CoKDEVh.png](http://i.imgur.com/CoKDEVh.png)

I would never trade these informations about me for some extra convenience.

------
zamalek
Here lies the benefits of handing your personal information over to a company
like Google.

To me, it's always been a choice, no matter which service I use (paid or free)
I am not going to naively believe that for one second my information won't be
"abused." When someone says, "XYZ is collecting data on you" the obvious [and
always correct] retort is "so is your XYZ provider; or at the very least the
NSA is making them." The questions should rather be "who is going to do the
least harm with your data?", "who will try to help you the most with the data
that they have collected about you?" and "who will make a competent effort to
fight for your privacy on your behalf?" From what I have been reading lately,
Google gets the best scores - which is why they will continue to trusted with
what I choose to share over the internet. Technology should get a job done and
then get out of the way as quickly as possible - if "whoring" out my personal
information to someone is the path to putting technology back into its
rightful place, then so be it.

------
hrjet
What I would love is an app that does this locally, without sending my data to
the cloud. I would readily pay a good deal for it. Better than my information
being sold to advertising agencies and their cronies.

------
cheshire137
I get annoyed with Siri every time I use it. Either there's a long delay and
she doesn't quite understand me, or I get the response I got this morning when
trying to look up directions: sorry, I'm not available right now, please try
again later. It was amazing using my friend's Nexus phone and watching Google
interpret what I said as I said it.

------
bookwormAT
"Google Now is definitely a great response to Siri."

That's an interesting way to put it. One could also say that Google Now is a
great continuation of Google Voice Search. Or a great extension to Google
Search. But of course it's also ok to say it's a response to Apples response
to these technologies. Probably makes a better headline as well.

~~~
youngtaff
Yeh, my HTC Desire had working voice search long before Siri came along.

Just goes to prove the power of Apple's marketing message, most people think
Google Now is a copy of Siri rather than Siri being an enhancement of
something Google was already doing.

~~~
jodrellblank
_Yeh, my HTC Desire had working voice search long before Siri came along._

Are you sure about that?

Siri company founded 2007, iPhone app demonstrated at D7 conference May 2009.

Siri approached by Verizon to be a default Android app, Autumn 2009.

Siri on iOS first release date: Jan 2010 in the App Store.

HTC Desire first release date: Feb 2010.

------
brucehart
I wish Google would open up an API for Google Now to developers. There are
many custom notifications that I would love to add to my Now screen, but right
now I am limited to the few that Google provides.

~~~
hnriot
"API for Google Now to developers"

that would last about 5 minutes before Now turned into another ad platform.

~~~
groks
You can have your event, flight, hotel and restaurant reservations, orders and
parcel deliveries, and prompt for reviews or custom actions in Google Now by
adding meta-data to your notification emails:

[https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/google-
now](https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/google-now)

From the other direction, you can have Google Now call back into your Android
app, triggered by hot words, as demonstrated in the new version of Todoist:

[https://todoist.com/blog/2013/11/todoist-for-android-adds-
su...](https://todoist.com/blog/2013/11/todoist-for-android-adds-support-for-
google-now-and-dashclock/)

I can't find any published API for the latter.

------
drakaal
Google Now and Siri are two different things. Now is a push system with
minimal pull ability. It really sucks at commands, and it doesn't do well with
things like "hotel in springfield with a pool".

Siri is a voice interface that doesn't really do anything preemptively.

Neither of them have the ability to "program" via voice the way Plexi does.
[http://plexivoice.com/](http://plexivoice.com/)

~~~
rlu
I was going to watch the video on that website but it got pulled from YouTube.

...seriously?

~~~
drakaal
It doesn't have any porn, or music... Guess Google Didn't like advertising a
competitor?

------
hipaulshi
I can't believe I didn't know "O.K. Google" trigger until today..

