Ask HN: Ok Google. Where Are Your APIs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Ok Google. Where Are Your APIs?

8 pointsallthingsapi2 comments

Surprisingly Google has not exposed APIs to let programmers go wild with their new Google Home speaker. They have built a number of feature as shown here https://madeby.google.com/home/features/#?filters=entertainment,answers,manage,plan,home,fun and a number of IFTTT recipes at https://ifttt.com/google_assistant?utm_source=en-ha-na-gdn . On the other hand Alexa has a full set of APIs and related ecosystem to support it, of course using AWS services, see here https://developer.amazon.com/alexa . Even the investment community is highlighting the gap with Fool.com making the case at http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/20/3-simple-reasons-google-home-wont-beat-amazons-ech.aspx . This is Google - they know better - why the hold up?

I got an Echo during beta, and there was no API at all. Later, they opened up the API. They've had enough time to make it useful by now (like, answering more than one question in turn!) but it's still not 100%.

Meanwhile, Google Home shipped last month. Building a developer community with necessary support and safeguards takes time. Doubly so if it's a win-or-lose battle for corporate dominance -- they can't just experiment willy-nilly with this, because one mis-step, and people won't trust Google in their homes anymore.

That being said, Amazon seems to have lost it with Echo -- it was the greatest radio for me for a long time, but since a couple of months ago, everytime I ask it to "shuffle my music," it plays approximately the same 20 songs out of my library of >5,000. Not useful; no response; no fix.

So, now there's a Google Home on my bedside table. So far, so good.

There is something about curating the ecosystem - Apple puts great effort towards it, maybe not perfect, but certain rules are enforced. Who owns that music "skill"? aren't there others that you could used and replace the not so random one? can't you down-vote it? and help the community curate it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com