

Android Chief Says Your Phone Should Not Be Your Assistant - davidst
http://allthingsd.com/20111019/android-chief-says-your-phone-should-not-be-your-assistant/

======
waterlesscloud
It's not a phone.

It's a constantly-connected computer that happens to be billed through what
used to be phone companies.

I'm surprised that someone in charge of Android has such a regressive
perspective on things.

~~~
alexhawket
His comment reminds me of that old adage that when trucking took over,
railways would not have gone bust if they had known they were in the shipping
business rather than the railway business.

Feature phones are communication devices that just happen to have basic
computing features. Smartphones are pocket computers that just happen to have
phone functionality. At least based on my own anecdotal observations of my
friends, who primarily use them for apps, games and messaging and only rarely
to make a phone call.

IMHO, If I were to take the various form factors of todays computers and
rename them according to observed, contemporary, use case it would be more
like:

smartphone -> personal computer

tablet -> family computer

laptop -> work/study/office computer

desktop -> room/workstation computer

~~~
true_religion
Trucking didn't take over and the freight railways didn't go bust, so I'm not
sure where that adage came from.

~~~
alexhawket
It's called poetic licence, this is why I never comment on here, it's tedious
backing up every little comment with 10 pages of pseudo-factual internet
trivia.

Trucking ships more ton-miles per year than rail and by value is an order of
magnitude larger.
([http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2008/bts058_08/html/bts058...](http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2008/bts058_08/html/bts058_08.html))

Trucking became cost competitive with rail in the 1910's and took off in
earnest with the construction of the interstate highway in the 1950s. It's
approximately 1/5th the cost of rail.

The quip about rail companies forgetting they are in the "shipping" business
is largely a reference to Penn Central which went bankrupt in 1970, the
largest bankruptcy in American history at the time. The private sector failed
to revitalize the company and it was nationalized along with 11 other lines in
1976.

From the wikipedia entry: "Facing continued loss of market share to the
trucking industry, the railroad industry and its unions were forced to ask the
federal government for deregulation. The 1980 Staggers Act, which deregulated
the railroad industry, proved to be a key factor in bringing Conrail and the
old Penn Central assets back to life."

([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Central_Transportation_Com...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Central_Transportation_Company))

------
buff-a
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c3e49548-088e-11dc-b11e-000b5df106...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c3e49548-088e-11dc-b11e-000b5df10621.html#ixzz1bI5FOgrh)

2007: _Asked how Google might look in five years’ time, Mr Schmidt said: “We
are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms
will get better and we will get better at personalisation._

 _“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as
‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”_

Now, nearly 5 years later, Apple's Siri begins to deliver on that, so Google
says "Oh, but not on your phone! Your phone is for talking to people."

<https://market.android.com/> <\- fuck this then, eh Andy?

~~~
jrockway
He didn't say "ask the question out loud", he said "ask the question". When
you ask Google what 2 + 2 is, it returns 4. Schmidt is talking about that for
harder problems.

------
michaelpinto
Google is amazing bad at communicating strategy — for starters even though
Eric Schmidt has left the CEO role he still seems to throw a curve ball every
other week. And when I hear something like this which flies in the face of the
fact that Google is ahead of the curve with voice recognition I just shake my
head.

Larry Page doesn't just need to clean up the product line: He really needs to
focus on cleaning up the messaging about the brand. This is even more critical
than ever given that they're in the anti-monopoly zone and that there is an
eco-system of companies that depend on Android.

~~~
napierzaza
They can't communicate because they shoot from the hip. They shoot from the
hip because they're running behind but are trying to convince everyone they've
already lapped their competitors.

They wouldn't want Android to do what the iPhone 4s does, even if they thought
about it first!

------
Lost_BiomedE
This confuses me, maybe because of lack of additional context. “Your phone is
a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you
should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.”

He just doesn't like talking as a medium of communication with your phone?
Tons of apps that require input do not have the end result of communicating to
someone else. Maybe he wants a neat segregation of 'phone' and 'computer'
tasks and voice is a line for him? But then, I can not explain the voice
features currently on Android.

------
bishnu
This isn't the only complete asinine quote Rubin's dropped lately [1]:

“I don’t think there should be apps specific to a tablet...if someone makes an
ICS app it’s going to run on phones and it’s going to run on tablets.”

What is going on at Google?

[1] [http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/19/andy-rubin-i-apps-
specifi...](http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/19/andy-rubin-i-apps-specific-
tablets/)

------
jsz0
If that were true I think we'd all be happily using BlackBerries. They are
fine communication tools. If he's correct then everyone using todo
applications or calendars (which Google builds into Android) or listening to
music (which google builds into Android) are using their devices incorrectly?
Even Android's rudimentary voice control system is outside the scope of his
definition of a SmartPhone. Obviously he was just put on the spot and had to
do some spinning. He cannot possibly believe that. He just can't admit that
Google got caught a bit flat footed by Siri.

------
mladenkovacevic
I think a phone could make a good assistant... but I am perturbed at these
attempts to give a robot personality. Every screencap I've seen of Siri is
people asking it "What is the meaning of life" or "I love you". Perhaps it's
just a novelty and people will actually start using it for its intended
purpose but at this stage I really don't give a shit what a bunch of
algorithms thinks about some philosophical question.

~~~
jsz0
Honestly I don't really give a shit about how the weather is outside or what
my co-workers are doing over the weekend either but small talk is pretty
important to communication with other human beings. The artificial personality
responses of Siri serve the same purpose. It's a brilliant way to lure people
into using Siri and break the ice of talking to your device. Also by giving it
a proper name and natural language recognition it totally breaks the barriers
down. You can have a one sided conversation with Siri and the people
eavesdropping on you would not think twice about it.

~~~
mladenkovacevic
I have no doubt that giving Siri personality is a great adoption strategy and
makes it more pleasant to use. What I am perturbed by (and not outraged as the
other commenter above you suggests) is the end-result of making technology
"too approachable".

I really don't want to sound like a Luddite because I think technology is
often wonderful, but it seems with every new iteration of hardware/software we
are moving further and further away from communicating with each other and
instead having the machines do it for us.

Here’s how I see that progression taking place:

1) Telephony enabled us to speak to each other without actually being in close
proximity.... ok that’s pretty convenient I guess

2) E-mailing, texting & other forms of messaging allowed us to remotely
communicate long-form, pre-composed thoughts without even using our voice ...
ok I guess still good

3) Siri now does the typing and the sending, you just tell it what to do and
it’ll act an intermediary between you and your friends…. Hmm I dunno if I like
where this is going

…

4) Future AI will “liberate” us from the stress of even thinking about when or
what messages need to be sent but will do it for us based on how we programmed
it to manage our life… hell, just kill me now

~~~
freemarketteddy
I think 4 is a bad interpolation!...Lets imagine that everyone had a highly
intelligent MIT grad as an indentured slave who will do everything you
say..Everyone will still choose to send their own messages.

------
bradleyland
Tangential to the point, but does anyone know what happened to the Wildfire
virtual assistant? I was fascinated with it back in the late nineties, early
two-thousands when it was circulating, but I can't seem to find it, which
would indicate that it died somewhere along the way. Did someone purchase the
company? Is there a spin-off product?

~~~
pinwale
It appears that Wildfire is currently owned/sold by Virtuosity. The original
wildfire.com domain is currently owned by Orange, though.

~~~
bradleyland
Wow. Talk about being put out to pasture. The Virtuosity website looks like it
hasn't been updated since 1995, and a peak at the source code confirms it...
MM_preloadImages()!

------
logjam
I develop a little for the Android platform and yet I guess I'm not following
the "Android Chief". Is he really saying a network-enabled, geo-aware, 64-GB-
of-memory, dual-core computer in your pocket should be designed _primarily_ to
make phone calls?

~~~
goodweeds
I would be quite thrilled if it could actually make phone calls!

------
napierzaza
The rhetoric of sour grapes.

------
freemarketteddy
yeah i am surprised too that someone like the "Android Chief" would make a
baseless and opinionated statement like that....But I will give him the
benefit of doubt...It is very likely that the reporter quoted him out of
context!

------
holri
Regarding Siri: I talked to my Nokia phone years ago already. I spoke the name
to call and it dialed the number. It worked quite good but: 1\. People around
me thought I am stupid talking to my phone 2\. Dialing with the keys was
easier and faster

~~~
tensor
Siri and Google voice actions do quite a bit more than dial people in your
address book. In fact, they are probably worse at that than at other tasks
because name pronunciation is difficult. I'd suggest looking at some demos.

As for your latter two points, yes, people may think you are silly if you
speak to your phone in company. Also, background noise such as people next to
you speaking can really confuse these systems. However, I've used it many
times (the google version) to write short text messages and most of all to ask
for directions. Why? Because it's _much_ faster thank keying in all that
information, especially for directions to intersections or restaurants. For
the latter, the system gives a huge added bonus in that it will actually look
up addresses for you just based on a store name.

Siri gives one extra feature over google voice actions as well: speaking back
and context. While speaking back may be somewhat of a gimmick, there are lots
of ways to report information, using the previous action to fill in contextual
information in the current action looks to be quite useful.

