1. Google Comes Up with a Smart Chatting Device and a Chatbot for Android: Soon you will be
chitchatting with electronics around you!
For years, computers have been solving our most notable problems. From doing simple and less simple
calculations, through mining data offline and later online to quickly find what we exactly want, to
giving us lots of entertainment through games and playing various media. But besides all that, we
often find ourselves lonely in the computer company. Google has now found a solution for those who
long to brag about something with someone all the time while surrounded only with machines.
On the Google’s I/O conference held May 2016, the IT giant unveiled Google Home, a new virtual
home assistant which is a tiny speaker and a microphone, able to listen to you and respond to your
questions and inquiries in voice. Chatbots and electronic assistants who are able to learn from
experience are not a novelty anymore, with Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana being around for
years now, but Google seemed to be steps behind with this and similar concepts – up until now.
Google is going to develop a talking solution for the home use, but instead of just software which needs
to be installed on a device, Google Home is a piece of connective hardware, a tiny speaker with a
microphone built-in. This gadget will become available in the fall of 2016. Currently, not much is
known about what will it do and how, but this may be a way to communicate with Google Search and
other Google services online via a two-way voice communication.
However, Google is not pioneering the concept. Amazon has been marketing Echo, a similar voice-
commanded device for three years now.
Knowing the power of Google services, it is expected that this speaker will be able to perform Web
search, read E-mail, news and other information it deems important for the user based on his or her
online preferences and behavior. Alternatively, it may serve as a telephone and voicemail device.
Atop of all, there is a set of functions which explain the device’s name. It will be able to turn your
lights on or off, adjust heating and air conditioning by subordinating the Nest thermostat, switch off
appliances when you’re not at home and greet you when you’re back. Of course, it is expected to wake
you up, play music you like and manage other gadgets across your household.
Google Home itself is a screenless device, but will have a TV box functionality. Paired with a
connective TV set and perhaps boosted with a Hi-Fi audio set, it turns itself into a mighty entertainment
center. A household will be able to have an array of Google Home devices across the home, which will
cooperate in pleasing the residents’ needs and even caprices. If you look for something to be called the
“main function” of this device, it’s voice controlling and managing other devices across the home.
Besides home automation, Google is preparing some other things to compete on the Internet of Things
market. Chat bots are the newest craze in the online community. Its are heavily upgraded versions of
already known voice assistants, with an ability to learn from interaction with those using them. Chat
bots use all advantages of cloud computing. These will take little resources of the device on which it’s
installed but will require an impeccable Internet connectivity most of the time should they

2. communicate with the database and other remote resources which will help them learn consistently and
find you any needed information.
Allo is the Google’s chatbot product which comes in the form of an Android app. For now, you can
only pre-register on Google Play to receive a notification when this chatbot will become available.
Allo’s main strength is the way it improves your communication with other people. It will be assisting
you in selecting which photos and other media to send to your correspondents, and will be able to
substitute the actual you if some correspondents are too boring and you still want to be polite not to cut
off or ignore them. In such cases this bot will be able to mimic your way of writing.
In cases when your correspondent also has Allo installed on his or her device, it will unleash plenty of
additional features. For example, the text you send will become less or more emphasized following the
way you speak and voice over.
Allo will care for your security, too. All your conversations will be encrypted. Additionally you will be
able to determine how long your messages will stay afloat once you’ve read them, and make use of
private notifications to protect you from over-the-shoulder surfing..