At Google I/O earlier this year, the company announced a new service that would be used in a number of its products and services: Google Assistant. Google Assistant is an enhanced version of Google Now, and is currently being featured in Allo, the Pixel, Pixel XL and Google Home. During the Pixel launch event last month, we learned that Google would be opening Google Assistant to developers with APIs they are calling Actions on Google.
The main reason why people are enjoying Amazon’s personal assistant, Alexa, so much is because of how many 3rd-party services that can connect to it. It seems like each month the company is rolling out another update with new skills for their customers to take advantage of. If Google Home, and ultimately Google Assistant, is going to be as popular and as useful then it will need a lot of 3rd-party developer support as well. And Google has realized this too.
Google did announce the Actions on Google API during the October launch event, but they did not tell us when they would make it available to developers. While we still don’t have an exact date, we do know these APIs will be open to developers sometime in December. You can check out the landing page for Actions on Google right here, and this will let you sign up to be notified about any news and updates for the service.
Google has a lot of catching up to do if they want Google Assistant to compete with Alexa. We’ll have to wait and see how many 3rd-party developers jump on board once the Actions on Google API has been made available. It’s being reported that Google is already working with a number of brands to get them familiar with the system. These partners include Spotify, CNN, Uber and OpenTable.
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