At the beginning of the year, Google presented its voice assistant’s capabilities for controlling various devices, from light switches and thermostats to smart TVs and security cameras. One month later, the company has announced another expansion of the assistant – geographical areas.
At the beginning of the year, Google presented its voice assistant’s capabilities for controlling various devices, from light switches and thermostats to smart TVs and security cameras. One month later, the company has announced another expansion of the assistant – geographical areas.
In 2018, Google Assistant will expand its presence to 30 more countries, to 52 in total. Meanwhile, optimized locales will extend from 16 to 64. The countries that will soon see Google Assistant include the Netherlands, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Italy and Russia. By the year end, most countries in Latin America and Europe will have access to the voice assistant.
As for language support, Google is adding 17 additional languages to the assistant, including Indian, Dutch, Russian and Arabic.
The change is significant compared to the last year, when Google Assistant was only available in the U.S., UK, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, India and Australia. As for the available languages, it used to speak English, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French.
However, countries in Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China may see Google Assistant entering their markets much later. As of now, Google hasn’t mentioned plans to push the assistant into these regions.
Meanwhile, Chinese companies have started to build their own smart assistant and smart home ecosystem, which is making it more difficult for foreign companies to promote similar applications later on.
Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant’s biggest competitor, is somehow limited in terms of regions and languages available. Amazon did start to sell Echo devices bundled with its Music Streaming Service in 28 more countries in South Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. However, Alexa speaks only English, German and Japanese up until now.
Google did not specify the exact dates when Google Assistant will be launched in the 30 new countries.