Having had a Google Home in my house for most of this week, there are some things that need improvement (I’ll cover that in more detail in my review coming up next week). One of those areas is app integration. There are just a handful of apps that work with the help of Google Assistant and Google Home. For it to be successful, this has to change and it likely will starting next month. Google has announced that the Google Assistant Actions API will be opening up to developers starting next month. That means developers will be able to enhance their apps to work with Assistant and, in turn, Home, through three different action models. First, there is the Direct Actions. This is designed for straightforward requests for things like home automation, etc. As the name suggests, it is something you direct your app to do as it interacts with Assistant.
Read on for more details
Second are the Conversation Actions. These actions connect the app with Google Assistant and users can make relevant requests in a back and forth style. If you remember during the demonstration of Google Home back in October’s Google event, they showed interaction with Home and the app OpenTable. This is very likely the API that was used for that interaction to work as it is a
Google Home
conversation between the app, you and Assistant.
Finally there is the Embedded Google Assistant SDK for developers. As Google puts it, “You’ll be able to build the Google Assistant right into a range of devices — from Raspberry Pi to mass-market consumer products.” This is a really important step for Google Assistant getting smarter. The more devices it is on, the more it can learn and the better it will become over time.
To sign up for Actions access, hit up the Actions on Google site.
Nice, I wonder what Apple has up their sleeves this time to compete against alexa and google home.