Google Working On “Conversational” Search Engine
While looking at one of those sci-fi movies set on a distant future, with intelligent robots and computers, have you ever desired to have that technology available right now? You’re surely not the only one and as it seems Google’s genius developers also have a similar desire.
The sci-fi world might not be that far away, as Google is working on a conversational search engine, to change the way we interact with computers and smartphones.
All of this started with Google Now, which changed the way we search by knowing what we want before we ask for it. If you ask for a restaurant it’ll suggest local restaurants based on your tastes, but that still feels quite artificial and incomplete. What if we are tired of Italian cuisine, or need a place to eat in less than 5 minutes?
Google understands these issues and is working to construct a search engine that is capable of responding in an intuitive manner, like a human would, when you do a query or command. Jeff Dean, from Google Search development team, gives an example of how a human, and in the future a conversational search engine, would react to a command like, “book me a flight to DC”:
You’d ask me a bunch of follow-up questions, “What hotel do you want to stay at?” “Do you mind a layover?” – that sort of thing. I don’t think we have a good idea of how to break it down into a set of follow-up questions to make a manageable process for a computer to solve that problem.
A conversational search engine coupled with Google Now’s location awareness would turn your device into a personal butler. Everything you might want would be at your fingertips and when you asked for it your phone would make all the necessary questions to make sure everything is as you want it to be.
This might still be years from reaching the public, but we can at least dream. For me, it would be great to have an assistant that when I ask for a restaurant near me, answers back, “Since today is your wedding anniversary, would you prefer a more romantic location?”. I don’t know about you, but that is a future I would very much enjoy. Don’t forget to leave your comment on the section below.
[Via 9to5Google]