Google rumored to bring voice commands across Android

Now that Microsoft has introduced Cortana, there is a solid three horse race for contextual smartphone operation. Siri, Cortana, and Google Now all have their unique twists and motives, and we may have just seen a glimpse of a significant overhaul for Google’s voice assistant.

The rumor — and we’ll be sure to keep that in mind as we discuss this — is that Google Now and its voice commands will essentially migrate throughout Android. Tentatively referred to as “Ok Google Everywhere”, the project aims to make voice commands richer, and carry them through all aspects of your device, even apps. As fun as it all sounds, there are a few glaring issues.

There seem to be a lot of working parts to this, wherein Google would need to introduce several APIs to Developers, and it’s touted as being modular in form. That really means each action needs to be its own line of code. While that indicates that the code could be plugged into other apps (think of asking a recipe app to find you a whatever recipe; that could be implemented across other recipe apps as well), it does sound like a mountain of work.

The rumor also notes Google wants to alter the interface for Android a bit, offering up a “Google” button rather than “home”. What could be simple re-branding is said to be search, wherein this “Google” home button would open up search rather than take you to a home screen.

Over time, this sounds pretty nice. Contextual input across apps, and search opening up a touch faster. This all sounds like things we’ll like five years from now, when it’s well established and built out. If the voice capabilities launched tomorrow, we’d lament the functionality not being everywhere we want it to be. It’s also a rumor, so we’ll take it as interesting talk, but little more than that.

Source: Android Police