According to a report from The Information, Google is going to announce its take on messaging bots at I/O tomorrow. Unlike competing efforts from Facebook, developers will be able to build bots for different messaging services using Google’s tools.
Compared to Facebook, Google does not have a popular messaging service used by billions of people. Google will instead offer tools to developers and let them build bots for different messaging services. The company is “relying on its strengths in artificial intelligence to convince developers to use its tools.”
Some of the functionality accessible to developers includes voice recognition and natural-language processing, some access to Google Now, and the ability to use Now on Tap to surface useful information. The Information is unsure whether all those features will be announced tomorrow at I/O.
Google is a leader in voice recognition and at processing natural questions in a way that a computer would understand. A previous article from Recode mentioned that the company would use voice and natural-language processing to build an Amazon Echo competitor, reportedly called Google Home.
The limited access to Google Now means that developer’s won’t be able to see a person’s data. However, developers will still be able to pull information from Google Calendar, Search, and Chrome browsing activity to offer alerts/reminders and content recommendations. Possible features include adding events to a calendar right from a messaging interface.
It’s unknown whether the company will allow developers to build bots into Hangouts or Google Messenger. Currently, neither of those apps have an open back-end API to allow third-party developers to build bots.
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