Watch out Siri, there’s a new kid in town. Google just announced at its I/O developer conference that its personal assistant is coming to iOS. You won’t be able to replace Siri with Google Assistant, but you’ll be able to use the feature in Google’s dedicated app.
“Today, I’m excited to announce that Google Assistant is available for iPhone,” VP of Engineering Assistant Scott Huffman said. The app isn’t currently available in the App Store as far as I can see, but it should be there later today. Edit: You can now download Google Assistant in the App Store.
Google Assistant is considered a more powerful voice assistant when you compare it to the current version of Siri. It lets you ask more complicated queries and it has third-party integrations. It also lets you control your connected devices, as the company just announced new partnerships with third-party companies.
Also new today, you can now type your queries instead of speaking out loud. This could be useful if you have a burning question and somebody is sleeping next to you.
Google Assistant on iPhone already works with third-party actions. This is very nice (especially because you can text with it) pic.twitter.com/I35VtcmgXx
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) May 17, 2017
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The company first introduced Google Assistant on the Pixel phone. It is now available on more Android devices and it could also come to your appliances. It is currently available on 100 million devices out there.
Right now, Google Assistant only works in English, making it much less compelling for international users. This is Siri’s main advantage when you compare it to Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Assistant.
But that’s also about to change as Google Assistant is going to support French, German, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese pretty soon. Italian, Spanish and Korean should come next.
It’s going to be hard to compete with the default option when you long-press on the home button, but maybe Google could bundle Google Assistant into the Gboard.
Starting today, we're bringing the #GoogleAssistant to iPhones. Whether at home or on the go, your Assistant is here to help. #io17 pic.twitter.com/a6T20HwnU9
— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017
