It is no secret that Google has big plans for Google Assistant across devices and into new countries. But the scope of that growth wasn’t very clear until now. Thanks to Dutch tech writer Elgar van der Wel, we now have a glimpse of what is to come for Assistant in 2018.
Elgar tweeted a shot of a slide from a DNI Summit event in Amsterdam that shows the growth plans and it is impressive.
Voor het eerst officieel uitgesproken door Google: Google Assistent komt dit jaar naar Nederland (we zijn blauw op de kaart!) #dnisummit #dni2018 pic.twitter.com/fYyU12FWpD
— Elger van der Wel (@elger) February 15, 2018
The slide is a bit hard to read but the plan is for Google Assistant to be available in 17 new language and 38 new countries.
If Google hits the mark, that means that Assistant would be available in 52 countries by the end of the year and, equally as important, expand the language support well beyond the eight available today. It is this kind of expansion that Google will need to make happen if it wants to compete with Amazon in the global AI race.
There is no clear indication from the slide or other sources of which countries and which languages will be first in seeing Assistant but to hit the mark, Google is going to have to average over 1 location per week. The reality is, they will likely release them in massive bunches but that doesn’t diminish the task at hand.
