Over the weekend, Google had revealed that it would be deploying Google Assistant soon to Android powered mobile devices in the United States, and then to other countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Well, the tech giant is now making good on that promise, tweeting just recently that the roll out is now ongoing.
Google Assistant is sort of an upgraded version of Google Now, the search and notification feature that Google is now phasing out. The company had officially introduced Assistant during its I/O conference last year, together with the Google Pixel devices, which became the first smartphones ever to sport the service.
Similar to how Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa works, Google Assistant has support for verbal commands. On top of that, it also has the ability to follow conversations more proficiently, which gives it an edge over other digital assistants already out in the market. Moreover, Google Assistant can also do other tasks such as creating reminders, capturing images, providing translations, giving directions, offering weather updates, and managing home devices, among many others.
With the use of Actions (which are essentially third party integrations that function similarly to Alexa’s Skills), the Google Assistant can establish a connection to a bigger mobile app ecosystem. What makes Actions different from Skills though is that it does need to be preloaded or preactivated.
Google Assistant used to be this really cool feature exclusively found on the Pixel devices, but Google has since realized it is better for all Android mobile users to get to take full advantage of Assistant’s capabilities, not only owners of Pixel handsets. And it would not be fair to limit access only to users of a smartphone that has not quite commanded a bigger market share yet.
Still, it bears noting that Google Assistant is arriving only to handsets that are running on Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Having said that, such a market is still sizable -- Android Marshmallow is almost at 31 percent among all Android devices across the globe, while Android Nougat is beginning to gain speed at 1.2 percent. However, smartphones on Android KitKat and Android Lollipop will surely not be able to experience the wonders of Google Assistant. But if they can upgrade to a new Android version, they might have a chance.
So how does one get started on using Google Assistant? Users need only download the Google Play Services update when it arrives and then install it. After that, it is just a matter of launching the smart helper by pressing on the Home button (like on Google Now). Or better yet, they can just enable Google Assistant by saying, “OK Google.”
