> especially since there's so little financial incentive to do so.
I mean, Google is selling this product - they're not giving them out for free.
I mean, Google is selling this product - they're not giving them out for free.
These giant tech companies definitely a lot of shady and ambiguous stuff, but I still think we should commend them when they put resources in these other techs that aren't necessarily money makers, but provide a net plus for humanity. It's clear that these projects are being funded by money made in other parts of Google, such as their ad business.
It's similar to how BuzzFeed is mostly a trashy website, but once in a while they will come up with well researched thorough articles. It's clear that their shitty front page is a fund for them to achieve greater things.
"For phone to access the Google Assistant: Android 6.0 Marshmallow or higher and other requirements"
Other requirements: https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7172657?co=GENIE...
We thought about listening for AVRCP key events to detect when a certain button was pressed and released -- probably play/pause, which seems to be the most prominent button on most headsets. It would have been hacky, though, and we ran into several problems. For one thing, a lot of headsets power off if the play/pause button is held down for several seconds.
We also had concerns about audio quality with third party headsets, especially those which didn't support modern versions of SCO (which introduced new codecs with 16khz support and other improvements), or with poor antennas leading to high packet loss (SCO is a lossy protocol, so we still get some speech and attempt to translate it, but accuracy suffers). We were concerned that all accuracy problems would make Google Translate look bad, even if the headset was to blame.
What about an app that you interact with rather than something physical on the headphones? Considering the phone is required, anyway...
The problem that the Pixel Buds integration aims to solve is that it gets cumbersome for two people to hand a phone back and forth. With the new UX, one person can use the phone while the other uses Pixel Buds for the duration of the conversation.
See the last sentence:
¹The Google Assistant on Google Pixel Buds is only available on Android and requires an Assistant-enabled Android device and data connection. Data rates may apply. For available Assistant languages and minimum requirements go to g.co/pixelbuds/help. Requires a Google Account for full access to features. Google Translate on Google Pixel Buds is only available on Pixel.
were the mooncakes good last night? -> google translate -> 月饼好吗昨晚好吗？
月饼好吗昨晚好吗？ -> google translate -> Would you like me last night?
I ended up forming my own question, which was slightly wrong - my colleague asked 你是要说好吃吗? ("did you mean to say 'tasty'?") which I threw into el goog for a laugh, and got in return: "Are you going to be delicious?"
So either google translate is a bit iffy (still amazing, but iffy) or mooncakes are some sort of aphrodisiac and I'm not understanding that :)
> It's hard to see the financial incentive to provide unlimited translations to anyone in the world for free.
More communication = more trade, more market penetration = more money floating around. It's not a direct incentive, but it's there.