Category: Google Assistant

Buone notizie! Assistente Google ora parla italiano.

For those that don’t speak Italian, Good news!  Google Assistant now speaks Italian.  More specifically, it speaks Italian on Google Home, which is not actually sold in Italy.  This quite little addition to Assistant is the strongest indicator yet that Google Home devices are coming to the country.

Officially, Google Home does not show up as a supported country in any of the Google support documentation which isn’t surprising.  Google only releases Home in countries where the language is supported in Assistant.  Since it is just now rolling out, and early reports indicate some limitations, it is likely going to be a few more days or weeks before Italians can order a Home in country.

Making good on its promise at Mobile World Congress, Google has rolled out Hindi language support in Google Assistant.  The announcement came from the Google Blog in India with support initially rolling out to Android devices running Marshmallow (6.0) or higher.  Support for Lollipop (5.0) will be coming shortly.

The BBC estimates that some 425 million people speak Hindi as their first language with an addition 125 million as their second language.  That is a significant number of people who will now be able to use Google Assistant to help them with tasks for gather information.

This is a feature that a lot of Google Home users have been wanting.  Location aware reminders has now rolled out to Google Home, meaning that if you set a reminder on your Home device, a reminder will be sent to you on your phone when you arrive at that location.  It is pretty slick and most certainly handy.

Yup, we’ve all been there. Try saying, “Hey Google, set a reminder to pick up more coffee at the grocery store” and your Google Assistant will remind you on your phone. pic.twitter.com/IkLjV4I2zd

— Made by Google (@madebygoogle) March 14, 2018

How it works is straightforward.  If you are at home and say, “Hey Google, remind me to buy milk when I’m at the grocery store”, the reminder will be set as any other reminder on Google Home.  But, when you leave the house and you arrive at the grocery store, you will get a notification on your phone with the reminder.

After being announced late last month that they would be coming soon, Google has finally rolled out Routines for Google Assistant.  The six routines allow you to perform certain tasks and get information all with one “Hey, Google” command on your Google Home device or your Android phone.  They are designed to make the experience more personal but also more helpful by not having to give Assistant multiple commands to get information.

In all there are six Routines that rolled out today:

• Good Morning
• Bedtime
• Leaving home
• I’m home
• Commuting to work
• Commuting home

It should be noted that both of the Commuting routines are only for your smartphone and won’t work on your Google Home.

Google Assistant is one again getting a number of big features and improvements starting today.   The announcement came as Google prepares its South By Southwest (SXSW) presence which, like Mobile World Congress last month, will be heavily focused on Assistant.  To help kick it off, they have announced two major features.

First, you will soon be able to subscribe to Actions in Google Assistant and get notifications for them. This may sound familiar as you can subscribe and get notifications in Assistant for things like the weather already.  This new feature however, would allow you to subscribe to a service that gives you stock price changes or a news alert that is not from Google themselves.  They used the example of Esquire which can give you wisdom tips for the day.  Soon you will be able to get those wisdom tips in Assistant daily without having to ask for them.

A new report from Voicebot.ai suggests that 19.7% of Americans have at least one smart speaker in their homes with nearly 72% of them being Amazon Echo devices powered by Amazon Alexa.  The report goes on to suggest that by the end of the year, nearly 50% of households will have at least one smart speaker in their house.

The reports is based on a survey of 1,057 US adults and extrapolated from there.  While it may not be the largest sample size, it does give a solid indicator of where smart speakers going in the market and their adoption rate.  While Echo adoption was at 71.9%, Google was a distant 2nd at 18.4%.  The likes of the Hardon Karmon Invoke, powered by Microsoft Cortana, falls into the “other” category which accounted for 9.7% of devices.