Once a year, the geeky faithful make their way to Silicon Valley to attend Google I/O, the company’s (GOOG, GOOGL) developer conference. Most of what transpires there is programmer gibberish to the uninitiated—but there are always a few eye-popping news bits for the masses.
This year, one of the most interesting developments was Google’s continued push to make its Google Home device—basically an Amazon Echo clone—distinctive and essential.
I had the chance to chat with Rishi Chandra, Google’s vice president for all things Google Home.
He covered what’s new (or coming very soon) in the Google Home device, but first he emphasized that none of it could have happened without the big new feature, person recognition. That is, the Google Home now knows who is speaking, and can deliver the answer based on that person’s calendar, work commute, music playlists, Uber account, and so on. (Here’s my full writeup of that feature.)
“It knows who’s talking,” Chandra told me. “In the end, an assistant can only be so useful if it understands who you are, right? So, if my wife is asking something about her calendar, then it needs to answer with her calendar. And if I’m asking, it needs to be answered with my calendar. And that’s actually enabled all of the announcements we were making today.”
(And one more that Google didn’t make: Shortly, Google Home will let you add or edit calendar appointments and reminders by voice, and read email summaries to you by voice. What took so long? Simple, Chandra says: Those features didn’t make sense until the Home could tell who’s talking—whose calendar and email to check.)
By David Pogue.
Full story at Yahoo News.
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