The next billion users are the future of the internet

I think the first and last point are fairly straight forward, but I'm still a typing believer. I don't think that natural language or other interaction will replace the written word.

Typing is faster than speaking and less disruptive. I can't really imagine how everybody on a train in Delhi is going to talk to their digital assistants without a noise proof helmet on their head. (or going crazy)

Also we've found many ways to condense information in written form. I can write "IIRC" but it's hugely uncomfortable to speak this way. You can't use smilies or emojis either when talking. In a way natural language is much less feature rich.

Google (and especially Facebook) are reaching a point a where they need these next billion, and the billions after that if there's anyone left, to grow their businesses. I would wonder about the financial value of these new users to the companies, though. I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but the first billion users are FAR more valuable to them than the "next billion" described in this article. Their revenue models are based on advertising, and the first billion live mostly in developed countries with have high spending power, and are therefore worth more to advertisers. The "next billion" may be part of an emerging global middle class, but currently and for the foreseeable future will significantly lag the first billion in purchasing power and therefore dollar value to advertisers.

The voice-only stuff is just building AI for the sake of it and romanticizing accessibility. What's actually going to happen is the younger generation in these countries will adapt to current technology and won't be caught dead asking their phone "Do I need an umbrella in Delhi today?". Voice interaction alone cannot possibly be the most optimal method, and Indian/Chinese companies that are more in touch with the market will define what mobile interaction looks like in the future.

Google is all talk here and the technology they are talking about produces far worse results than a static display like the "web" used to be.

> for example, asking “Do I need an umbrella today in Delhi?” rather than typing “Delhi weather forecast.”

I routinely ask Google in the USA, "will it snow tonight?" and it is nearly always wrong. I don't mean that the data it accesses is wrong, or that the prediction was wrong. That stuff is usually right. I mean that Google will read the weather forecast's 45% chance of snow and then it will say confidently, "No, it will not snow tonight" as there is a near-blizzard taking place outside my window (because the snow was not "scheduled" to start for another 20 minutes, at a 45% chance, despite the fact that the snow is plowing down outisde). Or if there is a 100% chance of snow for 15 hours in a row, and it starts at 1am, but you ask at 11:55pm if it will snow tonight, it will say "No it will not snow tonight."

Or if it is going to snow between 1am and 5am and you ask at 11:55pm the night before if it will snow tomorrow, it will say "No". You have to ask, "Okay Google, will it snow early in the morning tomorrow?" if you want to know if it will snow overnight.

Google's example query for the Next Billion needs work. "Okay Google, Weather forecast" and then reading the results like on the web produces a 100x faster experience sometimes with much much much better results.

(Aside: has it snowed even once at Google HQ since it was founded?)

Edit: And don't get me started on temperature. On the Home Mini, "Okay Google, what temperature is it?" .... "35." 35 what?! Yes I know you have a settings/ units preference somewhere that I cannot see or access right now (that's why I'm asking the magic box for the answer!). But 35 is not a temperature, unless you are giving it to me in Kelvin and choosing to not say the unit, which is WTF too.

We've got a lot to fix before we worry about the next billion. Language Processing isn't up to task. AI driven UI's generally suck and TBH people only use the internet when they have to I feel (around under a certain income level). It's interesting the amount that people will interact with their handset based on it's price. Look at app installs on handsets with a net cost over $350 and they install apps and do a lot. Less than that it's just a phone that takes pictures with email. (this being a huge approximation but I hope you see my argument)

Everything on the internet is also becoming like everything on TV/print it's just the same dribble. Once when there was a sense of community now resides a vast echo chamber.

The author's photo is 3 megabytes, and the two even more tiny images attached to the articles at the bottom of the page are each about 3 megs. The next billion users, especially of they're on mobile, shouldn't have to use that kind of bandwidth for non-informational embellishments on a static blog.

  the fact that typing is difficult for people who never grew up with a computer keyboard

This is something I had not really considered in regards to "digital assistants". I abhor them with a passion but can understand their usefulness and desirability in this perspective.

Maybe tangential question - but are there any open source/paid well documented text-to-speech libraries for Indian languages?

Even with voice-only stuff, isn't asking "Delhi weather forecast" much simpler than asking "Do I need an umbrella in Delhi today?". This doesn't sound right to me. Even if people are using the longer form that may be because of initial barrier and lack of training. Once they realize that they can get quality and accurate search results just by speaking keywords, they will switch to using keywords.

Maybe a quibble but to me "internet" is fibre lines, cell towers, network protocols, etc. aka infrastructure

What rides on top of the internet is what will change with the next billion users but the infrastructure will stay more or less the same. Also, just because the developing world works differently doesn't mean I'll throw away my keyboard.

I agree but we have to regulate current behemoths better and democratise access to attention economy.

> You should not have to learn English to use the internet.

But you need to learn it to program the internet. Get your muscle memory familiar with the hundred+ year old QWERTY layout.

I wonder if this means Google will begin developing features for the "next billion" at the expense of the "first billion"

> We are becoming more like them.

Rather than understand and control our technology, we are forfeiting privacy and determinism to global megacorps larger than half the nations on Earth while they figure out what you should want rather than doing what you do want.

Lets just deep dive how horribly dystopic the "dream" is of the Brazillian cellphone user in 2022:

Proprietary mobile handset manufactured in Chinese sweat shops with pre-installed state backdoors that the user has no idea about because they don't even know what a computer is. But the state agents that can on-demand turn their microphones and cameras on to spy on them, and their ISPs recording and mining all their communications are fully aware of what they are doing.

Said device will be solid plastic bodied with no removable battery, such that battery replacement requires a solder gun and a semester of community college engineering to accomplish. If any individual part breaks, its live with broken hardware (cameras, gyros, gps, wifi, damage the screen, etc) because costs to repair are so catastrophically high or near impossible to do and parts are made unavailable on purpose that the device is designed to be disposable, to rot in a landfill where it can leak toxic chemicals from its manufacturing into the soil and air.

Locked bootloader to prevent anyone from running the software they want to on hardware they own. No documentation on how that bootloader works, no ability to payload alternative software from ROM. The SoC is proprietary, the baseband is a trade secret, nobody can operate their own cellular network because all the IP is top down policed by the state and privileged ISPs.

Kinda-open base OS. I'm still to this day not sure how Google messed up making Android a proprietary hellscape in the early days, but its unlikely Android 12 will have a new kernel or bionic / other base userspace. However...

Wholly proprietary app stack. Google apps are all proprietary, Google Play Services control about 80% of the functionality of the device, from poweron to shutdown everything is logged and sent to Google - GPS positioning, website browsing, microphone recordings, photos and videos taken, and all touch events / key presses.

Social media / ad farming shoved down the throat from day 1. Preinstalled Facebook, Instagram, maybe Twitter and / or Snapchat on the homescreen. No instruction manual on the technical details of how the device works. No means to even know you can or how to program the device yourself. No IDE, no compiler, no shell. No ability to install apps outside the Google Play store without knowing to navigate settings to toggle off the app lock.

And how would you even begin to start searching for information on the device you have? Oh right, Google. Who modifies your search results based on what they think you need, rather than what you know you want.

Its entirely meant to predate off the poor and ignorant. They aren't worth much to global corps, but advertising is damn good at operating on fractions of a cent, and they are already doing a good job draining the creative and emotional health of the first world into addiction rattled social hell.

And really, nothing summarizes more how horrible this is than in how they want you to use Google Assistant as your input - yes, Ma Google is here to record everything you say and interpret the best thing to give you based on your words since you cannot directly interact with the device because you are illiterate. You have to use our proprietary remote listening service to use your computer.

Risc V save us.

Great, the people late to the game, and are here just to get on facebook are the "future" yay.....