Google Home is Watch Flesh Clerk Who Shoves You Up And Down Onlineabout to get a lot more useful.
The company is opening its voice-enabled Assistant to developers who can start creating "actions" for the device. Early partners will include media companies like NBC News, Buzzfeed and NPR, as well as consumer apps like Quora, Genius and Todoist.
SEE ALSO: Google's data centers, offices will use 100% renewable energy in 2017The idea is similar to the "skills" developers create for Amazon's Echo line: companies can create "Conversation Actions" that link their services to Google Assistant on Home.
Using the actions created by Domino's, for example, you can ask Google Assistant to order you a pizza, or ask for the latest CNN headlines.
Unlike Alexa's skills that have to be manually enabled, Google notes that once developers create a conversation action, they're automatically available. "It really is a conversation -- users won't need to enable a skill or install an app, they can just ask to talk to your action," Jason Douglas, Google's product manager for actions, writes in a blog post.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable The company is already working with a set of early partners to build actions for Google Assistant, but other developers can request access now as well.
Beerud Sheth, the CEO of Gupshup, a bot platform that is among the early Assistant partners, said he expects the number of developers on the platform to ramp up fast. "Developers will be able to very quickly build new bots and services in a matter of hours or days," Sheth tells Mashable.
Though Google is starting with Home, developers will also eventually be able to create integrations for Assistant on the messaging app Allo and the Pixel Phones, which have Assistant built in. Those integrations are "coming soon," Google says.
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Topics Amazon Echo Google Google Assistant Google Home Gadgets
