Google Assistant: Digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa, Bixby, and Google Assistant have improved our lives in a variety of ways, from setting an alarm to ordering food and reserving seats.
Since their inception, both of these voice assistants have grown rapidly with no backed off news yet. But, can you name the best feature from any one among them?
It would have been difficult to come to a single conclusion if you had asked this question a few years ago. The battle of digital assistants, however, has taken a new twist, making it easier for anyone to determine that Google Assistant is the best.
At CES 2019, the search giant announced several new Google Assistant features. These new features, which were introduced with the goal of making conversation more genuine and natural, have set a new standard in digital marketing, making it difficult for Siri to beat Google Assistant in the Siri vs Google Assistant war and alarming Amazon’s Alexa to maintain its market position.
Table of Contents
Google Assistant’s New Features That Can Make You Ditch Siri for New Google Assistant
1. Ease to Check-in Flights
Google Assistant will now allow you to check in for flights, save and receive boarding passes using voice commands. This service is currently available on United Airlines domestic flights. However, other airlines will provide it sooner or later.
2. Opportunity to Book a Hotel
Google Assistant can also help you book a hotel room in the United States. All you have to do is mention the hotel/location and the date of booking. The virtual assistant will speak about pricing and availability, as well as pay bills via Google Pay, making your hotel booking experience a breeze.
3. Become Your Personal Interpreter
Google Assistant will be available for you 24×7 in approx. 27 different languages which will make it possible and easier for you to interact with Google Home devices and the Smart Displays and a few others in your local language as well.
4. Introduction of Google Assistant Connect
Google Assistant Connect will allow mobile app developers to easily incorporate Google Assistant capabilities into their apps or create voice-enabled apps using Google Assistant SDKs.
Aren’t these incredible? Without a doubt, these five new Google Assistant features have raised the bar; however, there are approximately three dozen more features that have assisted the new Google Assistant in surviving the Siri vs Google Assistant war. These features have built trust among users, allowing the new Google Assistant to reach this point.
5. Enjoy Brand New Assistant Voices
How would you feel if John Legend woke you up one morning with a ‘Good Morning’ wish? You might think I’ve gone insane, but that’s not the case. The Google team has added six new voices to their digital assistant in order to provide a more personalized and natural experience. And, to our delight, one of the six people behind these melodic voices is John Legend.
It was previously difficult for the tech giant to launch a new voice. For good results, they were supposed to spend hundreds of hours in a recording studio. However, thanks to advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and WaveNet technology, they can now create a new voice in just a few weeks. Not only that, but they can customize the voices based on various factors such as pace, pitch, and pauses in between, allowing them to produce more natural outputs. Surprised?
I feel bad for iOS users because you can only change the gender and accent of your Siri assistant voice, whereas Android users have six unusual options.
6. Create Customized and Scheduled Routines
Previously limited to only six pre-defined setups, Google Assistant now allows you to create your own routines using the 1,000,000+ actions performed by Google Assistant. You can create a single routine with multiple actions in a single command, or you can add any phrase you want. Let’s suppose you made a custom routine for the morning and commanded Google Assistant, “Good morning”. It will comprehend and carry out the tasks assigned to it in this routine, such as displaying the weather.
7. Have a Continued Conversation
Google developers programmed their new Assistant with the ability to have a natural to-and-fro conversation with the goal of providing the essence of a natural human conversation. In other words, the Assistant enables you to avoid saying “Hey Google” at the start of every sentence. You can start a conversation right away. The Assistant will recognize that you are speaking to him and not someone else and will respond accordingly. However, this is not yet possible with Apple’s personal assistant, Siri.
8. Ask Multiple Commands in One Go
The tech behemoth has given it’s assistant the ability to respond to multiple actions at the same time. This implies that you do not need to use multiple commands to learn something. You can combine multiple commands and ask the voice assistant in one go. For example, you can inquire about the weather in both New York and India in a single sentence by asking, “What’s the weather in New York and India right now?” As far as I know, Apple’s Siri does not yet support this service.
9. Make Phone Calls for Appointments
Google’s biggest surprise at the Google I/O 2018 developer conference was the Assistant’s ability to make phone calls on your behalf. Yes, you read it correctly.
With the advancement of artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can now make phone calls to book appointments for you. All you need to do is provide a date and time, as well as the type of booking you want. If an online booking feature is available, the booking will be completed online. If not, it will make a call on your behalf, interact with the other person, complete the bookings, and add a reminder to your calendar, with the option to cancel at any time.
The best part is that the assistant will communicate in such a human-like manner (it even says “mm-hmm” like us) that the person on the other end will not realize he or she is speaking to a digital assistant. This feature, which is powered by Google Duplex technology, gives Google Assistant an advantage when compared to Siri.
10. Have a Breathtaking Visual Experience
Google Assistant was previously used to have verbal conversations with Google. However, the new Assistant will include a smart display and other features to enhance your voice conversation with a rich visual experience.
Do you know what Smart Displays are? It’s a new type of Google Home device that allows you to quickly check the responses provided by Assistant. You can interact using voice-search technology, as well as tap and make other gesture-enabled conversations, as before. You can now control your smart home, make video calls with Google Duo, follow a recipe, and much more. The Smart Displays will be integrated with all of the popular Google services, making your experience far superior to anything Siri could ever provide.
11. Enjoy Assistance Features in Google Maps
One of the most important things Google Assistant can do is allow you to use voice commands to perform various functions on Google Maps. These features include the ability to play music, send messages, and access other information without leaving the navigation screen.
12. Unlock Your Pixel Device
Do you hate to enter your PIN or use a fingerprint to unlock your device every time? If yes, then Google Assistant is at your rescue. The Digital Google Assistant, with its Trusted Voice feature, allows you to unlock your pixel smartphone easily with a voice command feature while preventing strangers from doing so on your device.
13. Do an Image Search
Suppose you are planning a surprise party for someone. You have a lot to arrange before he/she arrives and you urgently feel the need for some nice romantic quotes. What will you then do – type a search on Google, right? Well, Google Assistant can even search this for you. Ask your Google Assistant right away to search for the kind of images you need and half of your timely efforts will be saved. Isn’t it a bigger relief?
14. Find nearby Places
Often, we are not familiar about some of the best nearby places to visit in locality. Google Assistant can help you in this condition. It picks your current location and shows the best nearby places to visit around you as per your mood. It also results with the searches of the restaurant address, ratings, timings, contact details, and more information like these to make it easy to take the next step.
15. Get Suggestions
When comparing Google Assistant vs Siri, Google Assistant is a better travel planner, recommending the best places to visit based on your preferences, the time of year, and other factors. In addition, Google Assistant will pull up search results for flight and hotel bookings, streamlining the travel process for you.
Although Apple has replaced Bing with Google Search on Siri, the Google Assistant retains its target audience’s trust for a transparent and selfless service, making it a win-win situation in the Google Assistant vs Siri competition.
16. Watch Netflix movies and shows
You can also head right toward Google Assistant to watch your favorite Netflix web series or movie. Just command it to play the series you want, and it will quickly begin streaming your web series in no time.
17. Customize your News Feed
The Google new assistant (as well as the old one) is the ideal assistant for filtering out and accessing only the information that you are interested in. You can easily customise your news feed and get rid of all the nonsense by adjusting the settings for Google Assistant devices.
You don’t have time to open a newspaper or a news website to get all the key highlights? Simply ask the Google Assistant to read the news for you by tapping on the Home screen.
18. Get a Weather Forecast
Planning for a weekend gateway to escape? Want to know if the weather there would cooperate with your plans? Just hold the home screen button of your smartphone and ask Google Assistant about your own weather forecaster.
19. Keep an eye on Emails and Appointments
From Gmail to Calendar and your Notes, Google Assistant can collect and arrange all information from all the other Google apps and services to provide what exactly you need. Also, Google Assistant enables you to use third-party notes, which actually makes it possible for all of us to remain timely updated with several client meetings and other such tasks by getting the best outcomes.
20. Play Music and enjoy
Google Assistant can also be thought of as your personal DJ, playing the best music tracks from your playlist or based on your mood/weather. In this case, you can either say the song’s name or sing it if you forget what it’s called.
21. Set an instant Alarm
Google Assistant holds the feature to make your morning even more beautiful with its customized alarm feature. You can pick any music from your playlist to be played when the alarm rings. Isn’t this really impressive?
22. Make a Call or Send a Text Message
From making an effective and efficient call to sending a quick text message or even replying one, the Google assistant is here to make everything very simple and effective by its feature of voice-search technology.
23. Check your Smart Home Thermostat
If you own a Nest smart thermostat, the digital assistant can check on it for you using a Google Home device. However, you must first keep the thermostat connected to your Google Home account.
When comparing Siri vs Google Assistant, this adds another point in favor of Google Assistant.
24. Turn ON/OFF TV
Google Assistant enables you to turn on/off your TV set without even making you rush for its remote. This feature of Google Assistant is very impressive in case you need something entertaining but at the same time, you are too tired to even move a single step.
25. Discover what’s on TV
Have you ever found yourself scrolling through the channel list to see what’s on TV right now? If this is the case, you should start using Google Assistant right away. The digital assistant can easily respond to commands, like “Which channel is showing Spiderman?” or “When is Man vs Wild show starting?”. The Assistant quickly scans each channel and provides you with accurate information.
26. Make Calculations Swiftly
If you get nervous when you see difficult calculations, Google Assistant is the assistant for you. The voice assistant, designed by the top search giant, saves you from searching for a paper or calculator app by performing calculations on the same screen.
27. Book Tickets for the Movie
Google Assistant also assists you while searching for movie tickets, checking the theatres nearby, the timings of the movie/shows, and even making an instant need-based booking – a must needed relief from an endless queue.
28. Get Contextual answers
Because of its contextual information and ability to predict what’s next, Google Assistant is more interactive than Siri, as we discussed in our previous article ‘Android Oreo vs iOS 11’. It can go as far as telling you who directed ‘Batman Begins’ and showing you pictures of Emma Watson to make you feel like you’re interacting with a real person rather than an AI machine.
29. Check Flight Status
One of the really impressive features of Google Assistant is to save you from having to open a web browser, type the website URL, and perform other actions to check the status of your flight. All you have to do now is ask Google, “Hey Google, what is the running status of Jet Flight No 7854?” and you’re done. It will complete the aforementioned process and provide you with the necessary information.
30. Play a fun Game
Whenever you want to play a game for fun time but have no partner with you to play, just rely by turning on Google Assistant to play games like tic-tac-toe and solitaire with you in time.
31. Use the Camera to Know about Things
With Google Lens – another impressive feature of Google Assistant – you can simply point your camera at an object or location and get detailed information about it. This is another important factor to consider when deciding between Siri and Google Assistant.
32. To Practice a New Language
Google Assistant, which supports nearly 30 languages, can help you practice and improve your skills in any language.
Are you content and satisfied with just this much? Google has a lot more in store for this year to make it the clear winner in the Google Assistant vs Siri battle. So, stay tuned, and don’t forget to ditch Siri in favor of the new Google Assistant.
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