Google has been throwing around a lot of assistance lately – Google Now, Google Home, Allo Instant Messenger, and now Google Assistant. It seems like Google wants us to rely on them for all of the answers, much like Apple’s Siri or Windows’ Cortana, and you would be correct. Google is trying to create their own ecosystem so that customers will continue to purchase Google products or at least products that use their apps. The first big step was the new Google Pixel smartphones with Google Assistant built right it. This integration allows your smartphone to work with other Google Assistant friendly devices such as Google Home, another newly announced product, and the new Allo Instant Messenger.
The main thing to remember is that Google’s new Google Assistant is simply an advanced version of Google Now. With Google Now, you can say “find me a Mexican restaurant close by” and with Google Assistant you can also add, “make a reservation for four people at 5 pm.” There are many innovative tasks that Google Assistant can do, but there is no definitive list – probably because Google is adding new things every day and does not want to tie it down to just a single listing. Google’s big sale is that it will change the way we interact with our smartphones. We have them with us all of the time, and they have taken on many tasks beyond making phone calls – we have come to rely on them as our ‘personal assistant.’ We use them for storing names, numbers, bank account information, apps for unlocking our car, once we located our car with another app. Google Assistant will tie in many of your phones’ functionality and our questions by using voice commands.
Remember that Google Assistant is AI-based, so it will continue to evolve and grow the more times that you use it. Its AI feature will remember things you tell it – like your favorite color, your favorite food, and much more – so it will adjust itself according to your particular likes and dislikes. Because this is the preview version of Google Assistant, most of its commands are coming from Google Now. You can also subscribe to daily or weekly updates so that it will give you the weather the same time every morning. It can remember things like what your pin number is, or you can tell it to play a particular song and Google Music will bring it up for you. You can play games – it will bring up a few games and then select one to play. Eventually, you will be able to tell Google Assistant on your smartphone to look up television shows, and by using Chromecast, it will bring up your program on the TV.