Unfortunately I think it's pretty obvious why they were acquired, so 99% skeptical of their future. They were probably acquired because:
1. They realized just owning the software platform is very limiting (For example they can't compete with Apple no matter how good they are. Just look at Google maps. Thousand times better than the default Apple maps but will never be #1 map app on iOS because people always choose the default). Also, now even Google is moving towards owning their own hardware platform. As a VC funded company I think this is the best timing to exit. Otherwise it's all downhill from here.
2. Samsung wants to fight with Google/Apple/Amazon/MS and needed a weapon (because, you know, people say AI is the future nowadays).
So at best these guys will be integrated into Samsung phones to differentiate Samsung's hardware. I don't see them becoming the "open platform" that they envisioned at all.
As pointed out by another comment here [1], Google doesn't give you a "fair choice" in these things (beyond the ability to install competitors' offerings as separate apps) either:
> Google's MADA agreement forbids OEMs from making anything but Google Now/Voice Search the default digital assistant on Android devices with Google Play.
> Google is telling it's hardware partners for Google Home and Google Cast they're forbidden from supporting competing digital assistants.
It doesn't need to follow Windows or Android's UX, but it should be allowed.
Something like a settings menu where you can control the default apps for many "intents" (that's the android terminology, not sure what else to call it).
Choose an app for email, sms, "instant messaging", browser, navigation, phone, etc... Don't let individual apps change anything, and if you want don't even let them prompt you to change something. That last part can be enforced by appstore guidelines.
If apple does this, i'd switch overnight. And as someone that is about as far away from the apple ecosystem as you can be, i'd probably end up using many of the apple "things" over time. Let their first party apps stand on their own. I have no qualms with having theirs be the default, and it honestly doesn't even bother me if they aren't un-installable, but let me change my defaults!
Android asks once, right after a new app is installed that has the ability to be default handler for that action. There's a slight annoyance factor here, but its taken care of quickly and its a lot easier to see this menu pop-up than dig through settings to manually handle what app controls what.
Meanwhile on my ipad, I feel like Apple is making all the choices and I just have to deal with it. This is the biggest difference between Apple and Android for me. My Android devices have the apps I like and 'just work' when launched or whatever. Apple forcibly opens the Apple apps and I need to run down my screens of installed apps to find what I actually want to run.
I don't know how in this day and age I can't choose my default handlers of a product I own.
I agree but but worry at this point that it would be viewed as conceding to Google. My problem with iOS has always been the forced integrations you cannot decouple.
I'm not talking about the content. Talking about the user experience. It does suck, and I'm not even an Apple hater.
I have given up on using the default map for searching anything. Of course the map content itself is the same, but what good is a mobile map if you search for a coffee shop around you in New York and it gives you some grocery store in Scandinavia? I would be forgiving if this happened rarely, but to me it happened very often. I have 4 iDevices and they all have the same problem. This never happens with Google maps.
And I ask Google Maps to direct me home and it points me at Home Depot.
Frankly both Apple Maps and Google Maps could stand some UI improvements. Google Maps won't shut up, throws up some bizarre progress bar even on mute, has mystery meat navigation, and replaces the map with some giant material design-style empty space when it decides I've "arrived" (even if I haven't).
Apple Maps used to make it hard to pan around, but that's been fixed in iOS 10. Instead now it has terrible bugs in landscape mode, and has adopted the "you've arrived, now you don't need the map any more!" behavior.
If they just let the map be a map...But anyways I'm old enough to remember pulling over to pull out the giant paper map in San Francisco, so I can't get too upset. Either one has made my life so much better.
> And I ask Google Maps to direct me home and it points me at Home Depot
On iOS? You can tell Google your home/work addresses in settings, I ask for directions/transit home multiple times most weeks and it works. On Android they can figure them out, but on iOS they don't have enough permissions and you'll have to tell them - but when you do this works.
While this is a war of anecdotes, I can safely say this has never happened to me. If I search for coffee shops around me, I see...coffee shops around me. The new redesign of maps for iOS 10 has -- at least to me -- a much better UX than the current Google Maps app does, also.
To pile on: all of you guys reside in the US. Google Maps its data is much more up to date compared to Apple Maps in most of the world. Navigating in SE-Asia with Gmaps is a breeze. Apple Maps constantly sent me to places, only to have the current address owner (and Google Maps) tell me that the business I was searching for moved. Same in Europe. Doesn't hurt that Google Maps has public transit integrated pretty much around the globe. Apple Maps currently only has that in 10 cities.. screw that noise.
Yup, outside of the US is definitely where Google Maps data shines. Obviously just another anecdotal experience, but I've had Google instantly find places in Italy that Apple said didn't exist or gave a location very far from what we were looking for.
On the other hand in Tajikistan Google Maps is beyond awful, even in Dushanbe. It regularly placed pins kilometres from real location. Openstreetmap on the other hand was mostly fine.
All of them are far from perfect, but vastly better than what we had before.
Apple Maps is absolutely way behind in non-US cities; I happen to like Apple's UX more, but I wouldn't recommend anyone switch if Google is better in their area. I'm quite aware I'm in the area that Apple is arguably strongest in, although they're pretty good around all of the US now. People also have an idea of How Much Apple Maps Sucks that's somewhat frozen in time -- for instance, while their transit is way behind Google's, they're in 33 cities now, not 10. (And their transit maps tend to be more detailed than Google's in my experience, giving you specific exits from larger transit stations to take.)
At any rate, sure, Apple Maps isn't as good yet. They launched years after Google Maps and with a much smaller team. (There are some interesting politics behind that, from what I've heard; just say that the fiasco of the Maps launch is the primary reason Scott Forstall is no longer with the company.) The team now numbers over 1000, from what I've heard, and I expect the gap to continue to close -- but it's going to continue to take a while.
I just checked, Apple can't find me transit directions from my city (a single one stop train ride from London) and a major London train/tube station. Nor can it find me bus directions around my city. I don't remember when Google added this stuff, 5+ years ago?
In my experience, Apple Maps is almost a decade behind Google Maps in many places outside the U.S. and a few other countries. Google Maps beats Apple Maps not only in the map content, but also by having live traffic indications and turn-by-turn navigation. They're not even in the same league to compare elsewhere.
I get live traffic indications and turn-by-turn direction from apple's maps. The first version sucked, but that's like complaining about windows ME it's not really relevant any more.
> Samsung wants to fight with Google/Apple/Amazon/MS and needed a weapon
More likely, Samsung doesn't have the internal chops to build a Cortana/GNow/Siri but has a corporate mandate to have a Samsung version of anything Google does on Android. If you have ever used a Samsung phone, you'll see there's both a bundled (by contract) Google suite of apps and a matching Samsung suite of apps.
I don't think this is a sign of them moving to Tizen or picking a bigger fight with Google or Apple, but a continuation of what they've been doing for several years and something of a non-issue and non-news. I imaigne, like most Samsung apps, it'll be ignored for the superior Google equivalent.
Personally, I'd like to see them leave Android for Tizen. We really need more competition in the mobile space. Shame Samsung isn't serious about leaving Android. The few times I've helped someone with a Samsung phone have been frustrating and confusing. There's just too much Samsung junk on there fighting for your attention.
Ironically, I got a contact from a recruiter at Viv recently, and my main concern was that I didn't see how they could succeed unless they were bought by someone else. Either "intelligent assistants" are going to be a fad, or they're going to be a built-in feature: in the first case, the point is moot; in the second, standalone assistants like Viv was will go the way of standalone grammar checkers, i.e., either get bought and integrated or wither away. I agree that the open platform idea just wouldn't be viable; Viv would have to be so much better than Siri or Google Now that users would be willing to not just download it but use it in preference to the fully-integrated AI that came with their device.
Samsung doesn't strike me as a great place to end up, but I suspect they were the only place to end up, practically speaking. It'll be interesting to see if they can really compete against Google Now, though.
That depends on the application (and website) in which you're tapping the address. In some cases that will be Google Maps, if installed, in others you'll be presented with open-with options, in others still it will be Apple Maps.
Apps on iOS have to hardcode every other third-party handler that they want to work with besides Apple Maps. If an app presents you with open-with options for maps, that's because the developer took the trouble to add extra codepaths for Google Maps, HERE Maps, etc.
Sadly, Microsoft threw in the towel in the consumer space, and is now in enterprise-milking mode. Just look at the wording on the products.
They've been actively chasing away customers. Google is giving unlimited photo storage to Pixel phone buyers. Last year Microsoft took back the 15 GB it had given to Lumia phone buyers.
Surely their business model always involved something like this. If they were as good as claimed, Google, Amazon, or Apple would buy them, if only defensively. Samsung, with its wannabe status in software platforms seems to me like the best you can do if you're not quite as good as you hope (I'm giving Samsung credit they may not deserve, perhaps they have been utterly hoodwinked).
I hate that this comment turned an article about Samsung into an Apple maps bitchfest. Why do people feel the need to whine about barely related things in these articles? Does no one listen to you outside of here?
1. Agreed. It's literally the reason we're building our own hardware. You can't build the future on the current hardware platforms produced by the major players. We're working on the shift.
You can tell Windows you want to use a different browser, and that choice will typically be respected (when opening links from other apps, etc).
On iOS, you cannot do that for maps. If an app implements a "View this on a map" feature, I don't believe you have any way of changing which app that link opens in.
Sure, you have the freedom to install whatever app you want. And that freedom begins and ends with manually launching the app; third-party links will still open with Apple Maps.
Presumably because FB went out of their way to implement that. I wonder if they can detect that G Maps is installed, or if that option is always offered. Either way, I can say that many other apps (eg. Yelp) do not have this option.
The AI platform that wins won't necessarily be the one that provides the most utility. It'll be the one that people bond with emotionally. I'm not talking about you here- I'm talking about teenage girls with self esteem issues, recently landed immigrants working as night janitors, divorcees with drinking problems, and anyone else who needs a friend.
It's a technical challenge now, but in a few years making a good AI will be high art. By a few years I could mean 3 years or 23 years. There's the possibility that dressing an AI assistant up in a personality that asks 'how are you feeling?' could lead us into an uncanny valley that takes a long time to cross.
During Google's hardware/AI Assistant a point was made about wanting google assistant to emote based on context and be personal to the user, 'A personal google for everyone.
This plays to your suggestion of emotional bonding being a key need for AI assistant's.
Though having it called 'Google assistant' seems to break that connection, though imagine something is in the pipeline being tested and analysed over and over to see what works with AI connecting with a user.
If you think people are concerned with privacy now, an AI that people -kids- are spilling their deepest darkest secrets to will really creep us out.
It's probably best left to a third party to skin the Google assistant with soft skills. A small startup can afford to gamble on these things. Google (or Viv, Facebook, Cortana et al) need only provide the underlying capability, in such a way that they can wash their hands of it should it invoke a public backlash.
Just so long as they're collecting the data they need to ultimately know you better than you know yourself.
It was hilarious, especially seeing as we've had some interest from google regarding our device that we believe everyone will live and grow with. I envision a world where people will be born with their AI companions that will learn who they are and help them grow in the best ways. :)
Which Google has made exactly zero progress towards. Google Now has access to a lot more data and is a lot more useful than Siri, but if you curse at Siri for doing something wrong, she (it? they should really gender AI's.. helps with bonding) says she was only trying to help. Ask her if she watches GoT.. she gives you a quip about Lannisters. If I ask her what track is playing, she says 'let me have a listen'. Google Now just gives a beep and displays a bouncy colored wave. I can ask Siri 'do I need to wear a jacket tommorow' and it'll give me the forecast. Google just displays a search result with that particular sentence.
I agree I think the next evolution is a relationship with the AI. We are at a point where with enough effort and data these AI can answer your questions and preemptively tell you thinks that are relevant.
If someone can build something you grow empathy and compassion for it will most certainly be a winner.
I actually think this is where googles assistant falls flat. "Speaking" with google doens't feel as natural as it does for Alexa, Cortana or even Siri. Part of the humanization i think, is the name. That's been the case for me anyway. Saying "Hey google" feels less natural than saying "Hey Alexa"
That looks like a minor point, but I think it underscores Google's cultural problem.
Google has had so many failures in the calendar/blog/assistant space because Google doesn't understand ordinary people.
It's an elite company full of elite engineers running elite engineering projects (and a lot of search). It has no internal cultural reference point for average-IQ non-elite users.
This is why Google has so bad at productising interesting ideas that Google didn't invent, and which have to deal with real competition.
The software works, mostly. But users don't feel there's anything special or unique about the experience.
You could argue - reasonably - this is all about perception management. Apple does well because it sells its products as stylish and magical. Even if the technological reality is mediocre, Apple has consistently managed to create a brand that is good at making technology seem humanised.
Google has never understood why that kind of marketing is necessary. The technology is good, it should speak for itself. If customers don't get it - no one understands why.
Now with AI, the pitch is out of key for the same reasons. Most people don't want something that anticipates their intentions, because that's just creepy. Even if it works well, it creates an experience of diminished control and empowerment.
It's like someone saying "Trust me" when they're promising you something new, but they've never given you a reason to. Does the AI know you well enough to make the right decisions? Why would it?
Unless Google can dramatise that it does, reliably, they're not going anywhere with this one, no matter how good the technology really is.
So the value in AI startups is basically the number of ML/AI scientists you have times X million/scientist these days (perhaps multiplied by some sort of factor that measures the promise of your usually-not-working product).
Given this, wouldn't it make sense for AI/ML people to form a guild and/or union and capture this value themselves, rather than let smooth-talking founders take all the cash?
This is going to be great, The worlds top firms are now in direct competition with each other.
Microsoft(Cortana), Amazon(Echo), Apple(Siri), Google(Assistant/Now) and now Samsung with Viv. The possibilites are just endless, the space race netted us a lot of innovation and this should do the same. Competition leads to Innovation
Competition is for losers. 10 years ago the battle was microsoft vs yahoo and whoever...and it turned out the ones to pay attention to were fb and twtr...etc. The big innovation, the one to dominate headlines in 10 years, is likely unknown, run by a few guys on a shoestring and barely on the radar right now.
FB is the only innovator on your list that could be classed as a newcomer. And it's been around for more than a decade.
I doubt we'll see the big innovation from a garage now, because the cost of entry has become too high for shoestring operators to succeed.
ML training needs fast, expensive hardware. You can experiment with it on a 1080 graphics card, but for industrial applications you need a lot more speed and power.
The cost of starting a transistor startup in the 1950s was too high so the traitorous 8 started Fairchild.
The cost of starting a SSI company was too high in 1968 so 3 dudes started intel.
The cost of starting a new mainframe company in 1976 was too high for most garage ops but turns out two hippies were ready with a better, cheaper, replacement product anyway.
The cost of starting a pc company for Gates and Allen was too high in 1981 so they left it to IBM and wrote the OS. Turned out ok.
The cost of starting and OS company in 95 was too high for Brin and Page so they left it to msft and looked at how to reliably search the web.
The cost of starting a search engine was too high in 2004 so Zuck looked at how to connect people rather than documents. Good call.
>I doubt we'll see the big innovation from a garage now, because the cost of entry has become too high for shoestring operators to succeed.
> ML training needs fast, expensive hardware. You can experiment with it on a 1080 graphics card, but for industrial applications you need a lot more speed and power.
This isn't the 1990's. AWS exists. Not to mention how hot VC is for AI startups.
Sure, we won't have 15-year olds making the next AI breakthrough but to say that AI is solely in the realm of "big business" is naive.
Does anyone else have the feeling that the ecosystem lock-in inherent in all of these large primarily hardware-focused companies isn't necessarily the whole future? I can imagine things like airport kiosks, coffee machines, subway terminals, hotel front desks, and other everyday objects or conglomerations of objects that aren't part of the consumer market most of these companies target also having such an interface, and they may not want to give all of that to Google or Amazon for instance.
Making that software seems like a necessity to me (the "operating system" of the future) and I'm not sure how it fits in with the current trajectory. Thoughts?
The large vendors are using phone revenue to fund fundamental conversational AI research. Eventually it'll get commiditized. Either as discoverable microservices that your favorite conversational AI finds, or as tiny ones for each device. I'm not sure which one is really worse.
As long as the founder(s) know what they're doing. I've seen way too many AI startups with founders who don't even have the most basic ML knowledge but are doing it because it's the trend.
Replace "ML knowledge" with "CS / SW Eng. knowledge" and I would say this has always existed in the start-up world. My personal opinion is that lack of basic technical knowledge is a major no-no unless at least one of the other co-founders is technical.
Viv still uses Nuance according to their last demo, viv seems to be just a developers platform. Even Siri does not use Nuance anymore. Samsung probably needs developers for their IoT products in order to compete.
Pixel's new assistant will not be available on other android devices with nougat so make sense that Samsung will have to bundle their own into their devices.
I'm amazed that the founders didn't have some sort of non-compete agreement here.
Excited that it's a more extensible digital assistant though. I think the reason why I like Alexa the most out of the services right now is that it feels like the easiest to add new functionality too. Hopefully this will pave the way for more open ai assistants.
California doesn't believe in non-competes. The state believes that competition is in the public interest and enforcing non-competes would be counter to that.
A lot of the Siri IP belonged to Stanford SRI and Siri was basically licensing it. So when Adam left Siri and started Viv, Apple couldn't do anything. Also note that, Viv rarely talked about any details of their technology. Probably they were slightly afraid. At the same time Apple didn't want to pick a fight with a small startup and damage it's reputation. It might change now that Samsung is the owner.
I wonder if Samsung would ever put this on their Android Phones. I am confident it will not be able to compete with Google Now on the same device.
In addition to founders, Viv got a good number of early Siri engineers. From this and other hints I gather its internals are similar to first few versions of Siri. For example, they outsource the Speech component (something Apple still does for several languages). A consequence of that design is separating speech recognition from NLP, which makes it inherently more error-prone than Google Now.
Arguably, it may only have made sense for Samsung to buy Viv if Samsung is planning on ditching Google entirely.
- Google's MADA agreement forbids OEMs from making anything but Google Now/Voice Search the default digital assistant on Android devices with Google Play.
- Google is telling it's hardware partners for Google Home and Google Cast they're forbidden from supporting competing digital assistants.
So, having Viv as a second digital assistant which isn't default on their own devices and doesn't support any of the products Google's does, doesn't make a lot of sense. But if they need something compelling on Tizen to launch an exodus from Google's platform, where the Pixel has just been declared to get a ton of exclusive features they won't have access to... well, that'd be a reason for Samsung to buy Viv.
> Google ... forbids OEMs ... from supporting competing digital assistants.
~Wow, that kinda makes all the ire — including the comments on this page — directed towards Apple for its "walled garden" and "not allowing choice" seem a bit unfair.~
Yes iOS has fewer flexibility in its user-facing options than Android, but Google seems to be no less controlling than Apple.
For some cases, I'm glad that iOS has these restrictions for apps, especially when it comes to Google; on the desktop, when I sign onto YouTube, I automatically get signed in for Google Search and everything else as well. That is something I really hate and find alarming, so much that I only use YouTube in private browsing.
Google can't do that on iOS. They TRY to, in a very creepy way — when I sign-in with an email on their YouTube app, all the other Google apps on my device see that email too — but they can't force global-sign-in on iOS. That's good. Some walls are good.
You can install other maps/browsers/assistants on iOS too, and other apps can interface with them if they want to. For example Chrome will automatically open YouTube links in the YouTube app. I agree that iOS is more restricted in that it doesn't let the user specify the default browser etc. for links from other apps, however.
That comes across as well... Pretty anti competitive. Akin to Internet Explorer on Windows.
If the future is dumb, commoditized devices that are basically sensor packages to feed an AI, Google has basically drawn a line in the sand for anyone that wants to use licensed Android and essentially sent the message of "you can only focus on hardware".
> I wonder if Samsung would ever put this on their Android Phones.
I suspect that may be part of the long-term plan. They already partnered with VoiceBox [0] for some of the services, this seems like a natural expansion into additional services. Possibly sharing leveraging capabilities across both companies.
I believe it's possible, they have already tried putting all kinds of apps on their devices that are meant to replace Google functionality.
Some of it worked, some or even most of it didn't.
One thing that we should keep in mind is that some US based services do not work nearly as good in other languages as they do in English.
For example Google Now didn't work as well in German as it did in English for a very long time. Maybe it's still like this to this day. (didn't try it anymore for some time)
So I can absolutely imagine that currently Google Now in Korean/Chinese is worse than Siri/Google Now was in its first iteration in English. For us in the West their apps might look bad and unusable, but to people in Asia our apps might look equally bad and unusable.
> They'll have theirs default and most people won't bother changing it.
Except in order to have Google services and the Play store you need to agree to a license with Google, which can easily mandate you not replace their stock apps with your own (or rather, not default to your own, unless the user indicates otherwise).
Now, you could ship a phone without Google Play Services, but that's very unusual in the west (less so in China et al).
I'm just curious how the founders were able to somehow negotiate a deal to sell Siri and then go right back into the same arena and create a "better" version. How would apple or any company allow those terms?!?
They didn't just sell to Apple and immediately quit. They stayed around for some years, which is a common contract condition. You can't practically require people to not innovate after they left a company.
Non-compete agreements are signed in (many) deals but they would be for a fixed term (typically 1 to 3 years?) after which, the inventors/innovators would be free to carry on further.
if this one doesn't turn itself on when its in my pocket, and doesn't start phoning random people without any speech like noises happening, i can see this being slightly less of a gimmick than siri... :P
kudos to these guys though, i never followed their story after apple took them on, and just assumed they would still be there. selling something then going back to doing the same thing, and doing it better... i find that admirable.
also despite my opinion on siri being "doesn't even work, not even close" i do look forward to more and better developments in that direction. although a part of me wonders if we won't just be wiring ourselves directly into our devices by the time this sort of tech becomes truly useful. :)
I wonder if this is part of a move by Samsung to move off of Android? In some ways that would be a shame - the only phones I have owned are Samsung Android phones, love them.
Still, Samsung is large enough to build and maintain their own stack.
They are hot garbage, too. It's really ridiculous, you get a new Samsung phone and it has the default google/android apps, a copycat set of Samsung apps, and often a third set of carrier-specific apps that are even more of a dumpster fire.
It's very disappointing that Apple got stuck with Siri and does not really improve on what they have. I assume part of it has to do with the fact that they are very careful about customer data and a lot of what makes assistants useful is having as much data in the cloud as possible.
Still. As an iOS user I'm very jealous of what exists on other platforms now.
Siri has been getting better ever since its release. Have you used it in iOS 10? It now has 3rd party integration with Uber and Lyft, Venmo, and many other apps. Its reliability and usability have drastically improved since Siri 1.0 on the iPhone 4S.
And yet, the simplest interactions always disappoint me. I said "Create an appointment with John Smith at 2PM tomorrow". John Smith being someone who isn't in my contacts. Siri presented me with a list of my contacts that she thought I might have meant. The option "None of these" was also presented. I chose that, thinking she would just create the appointment with John Smith in the title as plain text like I wanted, and she said "All right, I'll leave it off your calendar" and that was that.
1. They realized just owning the software platform is very limiting (For example they can't compete with Apple no matter how good they are. Just look at Google maps. Thousand times better than the default Apple maps but will never be #1 map app on iOS because people always choose the default). Also, now even Google is moving towards owning their own hardware platform. As a VC funded company I think this is the best timing to exit. Otherwise it's all downhill from here.
2. Samsung wants to fight with Google/Apple/Amazon/MS and needed a weapon (because, you know, people say AI is the future nowadays).
So at best these guys will be integrated into Samsung phones to differentiate Samsung's hardware. I don't see them becoming the "open platform" that they envisioned at all.