Everything You Can Do With Google Assistant That You Couldn’t Do Before
Yesterday, the new Google Assistant showed up at all of the company’s hardware events. At Google, it was less clear how Assistant differs from Google Now , Now On Tap, or Google Voice Commands . To clear things up, here are some of the best new features in the Assistant and how it fits into your life on Google.
Right now, the only way to try the Assistant is to use the Google Allo chatbot . Google also announced some features that won’t arrive until devices like Google Home or the Pixel phone arrive . Not all features are available on every device, but there are many more promising ones ahead.
Control Google Cast and other devices using voice commands
If you have an Amazon Echo , controlling your lights or thermostat with a voice command might not seem so new. However, Google Assistant integrates Chromecast and any other Google Cast-enabled device . For example, with the help of the Assistant, you can say “Play Luke Cage.” Google will automatically detect that you want to play Luke Cage’s show through the Netflix app on a Chromecast that’s on your Wi-Fi network.
It’s unclear how this will work if you have multiple Google Cast devices. For now, we know that this feature will be included in Google Home, but we hope that it will at least appear in the Pixel phone.
Google Assistant will also be able to control smart home devices such as the Nest , Samsung SmartThings and Philips Hue . These are just the partners that Google announced at launch, but others are likely to follow. Again, it’s unclear if Google would let you control these devices from your phone or just from the Google Home speaker, but both would be awesome.
Have difficult conversations with clarifying questions
Google is touting the ability to “talk” to the Google Assistant, like all anyone wants is a deeper relationship with their phone. However, when you actually use it, it becomes clear how much better the ability to ask clarifying questions makes the experience. To demonstrate this, I tried one of my favorite Google examples that I never use: searching for movie showtimes.
If I already know which movie I want to watch, I can simply search in whatever application I’m going to use to find tickets directly. Google is useless for me here. However, if I’m wondering what’s going on, I can ask the Assistant: “What’s playing?” In Allo, this shows me a list of films that are on in my area. The magnificent seven looks good. I click on it to get some information and feedback. I figured it was worth a try, so I go back to talking to Allo and say Session Schedule to see where he’s playing next to me. Except that he only shows me the theaters that are closest to me. I prefer the other AMC, which is about halfway between me and my friends. So I ask again, “Point Boulevard Session Schedule.”
Although I am now multiple teams in this conversation and even left the app for a while, Google still knows that I am asking about the Magnificent Seven . In fact, the only flaw left with the system is that Google will only prompt me to book tickets through Fandango (which we’ll come back to later). In the past, you had to have a pretty good idea of what you want to find in order for many of Google’s cooler features to be really useful. Now that you can ask additional questions and have a real conversation, many queries will become much easier.
Subscriptions allow you to receive reminders and alerts about everything as often as you want
Google Now already guesses that you might want to see the weather every day and maybe a few stock prices. With Google Assistant, you can get this kind of repetitive information about everything by searching for “send me daily.” Want to get daily updates with all the presidential news? Have you received it. Do you need to check the current exchange rate between the US dollar and the British pound every morning? Google Assistant can do it.
When I say anything, I really mean anything . On the Google Allo, I asked the Assistant, “How tall is Jeff Goldblum?” To which he naturally replied, “Six feet four inches.” Then I set up my subscription to run this request every morning at 7am. I got a notice this morning from Allo stating that Jeff Goldblum is still six feet four. Presumably, this means Google will let you subscribe to pretty much anything. We’ll see how challenging these planned commands can be when the Assistant leaves Allo later this year. It is possible that in the near future you will be able to schedule a taxi request every morning, or mute your phone every night, simply by subscribing to certain Google Assistant commands.
Send commands offline and get a response later
When you lose your internet connection, Google voice commands suddenly become useless. Google can’t even decipher your commands, let alone know how tall Jeff Goldblum is. The assistant, on the other hand, will be able to save your commands and send them when you reconnect.
This works best in Allo, where you can enter your commands, as most of the voice transcription does not work without an internet connection. Just enter your command and the next time you connect, you will get a response. If you leave the app, Allo will even send a notification to let you know that it has reconnected and found your answer. This can be very handy, for example, when you need to set a reminder on the subway before you forget. Some Google voice commands already work without an internet connection , so this isn’t news, but it’s a good safety net when your connection is fussing.
Google Assistant will support third-party services
Google Search has an odd relationship with third parties. You can get information from Wikipedia, IMDb, Fandango and a million other services, but you can’t always interact with them. For example, if you ask Google to call you a taxi now, it will provide you with links to Uber and Lyft, but will not be able to take you directly. This will change in December when Google launches its activities on the Google platform.
This platform will allow third parties to add voice commands to Google Assistant. These can be “direct actions” which are simple queries such as “How tall is Jeff Goldblum?” or complex, conversational. Google demonstrated this yesterday by showing how the Uber call would work. You can simply say, “I need an Uber,” Google will connect you to the Uber chatbot, which asks where you are going, you give it the address, choose what type of taxi you want, and Uber will take care of the rest.
Since they’ll be built on Google Assistant and not just one device, they’ll be able to adapt to whatever device you use. You can click on the suggested answers to the Assistant in Allo, or speak commands in Google Home. As we said, you can also pause your conversations and come back to them later. Let’s say you’ve already told Uber where to pick you up, but you need to ask your group if you need UberX or Uber XL. Google will wait while you figure this out. You no longer have to try to memorize a long, complex vocal command to complete it in one go.
One of the best random things about the Assistant is that the name Google Now is essentially dead. While the company has n’t exactly provided a direct answer on how Google Now will fare after the Assistant rolls out, Android Police found that virtually all links to Google Now and Google Now On Tap had been removed in Google’s latest beta . This suits us, since Google Now was originally a terrible name that only confused over time. Assistant makes much more sense as an umbrella term for the intellectual functions of a company.