Google had already made the GBoard popular on the iOS platform, taking over a large chunk of Apple’s user-base onto the Google product line. Now, Google is also planning on wooing users from the Siri platform and onto Google Assistant, if rumours are to be believed.
First having been only exclusive to the Pixel phones, Google Assistant can now be enjoyed by a ton of other Android handsets – Android-only handsets. Not for long however, since a Google executive neither confirmed nor denied that there will probably be a Google Assistant in the works for the iOS at some point as well.
Gummi Hafsteinsson spoke at the MWC 2017 this week and spoke about the future of the Google Assistant platform saying that the company does not have anything that they can announce at this stage, but the main criteria is to make sure that Google Assistant can reach as many people as possible. This does not rule out other operating systems as well, so we do still have some hope regarding Google’s involvement with matters of the iOS.
Google Maps, Hangouts, Gmail, GBoard and other numerous apps have all made their way to becoming permanent placeholders on many iPhone users’ app drawers (rather home screens), and it could seem possible that the Google Assistant will be there someday as well. This will be a tricky feat to accomplish for the company however, since, compared to the other apps released on the iOS platform, Google Assistant comes under certain regulations by the App Store by Apple. According to Apple’s rules, third-party voice assistant apps are not allowed to integrate themselves with Apple devices, ensuring that Apple’s Siri remains at the forefront of voice-assisted applications and no one else is there to compete with it.
Having said that, Google Search is available on the App Store and it has Google Now built-in, which is more-or-less a simpler version of Google Assistant. It won’t be surprising to see Google replace that aspect of the Search app with Google Assistant and then launch it on the iOS platform. It’s a fairly grey area though.
Google is now rolling out the Google Assistant app for Android versions that are 6.0 and over, so gradually, a lot of new devices might come pre-installed with it or will at least be compatible with the AI app. This is a great step ahead for Google and one that will make its competition a lot more fearful the company’s strides in making Artificial Intelligence more universal. Considering there have been numerous new AI assistants having sprout up recently, it will be hard for them to penetrate the market as much as Google can.
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