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What Does Google Get Out of Voice?
itwbennett writes "Assuming Google isn't offering Voice out of the goodness of their hearts, what's the payoff? One likely, if cynical, possibility is that Google Voice is 'just another feeder for their vast database on you,' writes Kevin Purdy in a recent blog post. Or maybe Google just wants to get better at speech-to-text, and collecting your voice messages is just one big voice-mining effort. 'They already did it with GOOG-411, the free phone directory service that mined voices across the country to launch Google Voice's current transcription offering,' says Purdy. For its part, Google says it has no plans to monetize Voice beyond the international calling and number porting fees that it currently charges."
Nonsense. The reals reason is that Google maintains a very complex evil portfolio that they need to offset with good assets by the end of the fiscal year. Capitalism and the free market has turned their "do no evil" slogan into "do no net evil." As a result, Google Voice generates rare and coveted benidons that are traded on the moral exchange. One benidon offsets one hedon as a base unit at the end of the year. While Microsoft and Apple executives Scrooge McDuck in their massive hedon reserves and show them off to investors, every year Google struggles more and more to finish in the white.
My work here is dung.
For reasons which are far beyond this post, I can't port my old phone number to my new phone provider, but I CAN port my old number to the mighty GOOG.
Basically its a forwarding service pointing my old number to my android phone.
In the long run, if "phone service" went away and all I had was data service, and I ran google voice over that data service, I'd be OK with that. If I had ubiquitous wifi and could connect to google voice over that, I wouldn't even need "phone" service.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
All your phone numbers, those of your wife, your kids, your mistress and all your relatives and business contacts.
They get the ability to really improve voice recognition software, the ability to search on audio, etc.
Just a guess.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
"Assuming Google isn't offering Voice out of the goodness of their hearts, what's the payoff?
Sincerely folks, I do not know or care. What matters to me is how I am going to be able to make something for myself in a climate of strangling student, home, medical and personal debts. All these in a climate of an uncertain job market, which is likely to get worse before getting better.
What Google of any other company is doing with their cash is of no consequence to me sincerely.
Does what Google do with its services matter to you? If so, how?
Speech recognition is essential in order to achieve the inevitable pre-singularity destruction of the language barrier. They want to monetize that destruction. They are a business. Duh.
Author hits the nail on the head. A lot of people debate whether Google is a search company or an ad company, truth is it's neither, it's the world's biggest statical service, gathering up and analyzing massive amounts of statistics(for good or for ill). Their main way of monetizing that right now is ads, but they are already starting to branch out. For instance you can pay to have Google's pattern matching technology mine through your own company's data to find trends, classify things etc. And I imagine that Google is looking towards other markets beyond ads, and for that they will need lots and lots of data, your data....
Monstar L
To take over the world, of course. Wouldn't you?
If Google had won a wireless spectrum auction (they didn't), then Google Voice could've been the core of Google's competition with the telco network. Pieces of it are probably still useful for Android, and it could give them negotiating leverage with carriers. So it could've been really important, but didn't turn out that way. The thing with software products, though, is that almost all of the cost is in the initial creation; once created, they cost very little to keep around. So Google keeps Voice running, because it costs them little and turning it off would be very disruptive.
Also, when you install Google Voice, it asks you whether you want to turn on Personalized Voice Recognition,
With you so far...
so that Google can pick your voice out of a mess of voices.
[citation needed]
I personally have seen nothing that indicates this is why Google asks you to do this, and no evidence of it. Do you have any evidence?
It could be that this might also be somewhat useful in that regard, but the most obvious and most likely use is that it will make your voice transcription more accurate. It will learn your quirks and how to deal with you accent.
My Asian and Indian coworkers can't use Siri, and most have stopped trying out of frustration. It can't understand their accent, and doesn't seem to get any better over time. That is the most obvious reason why Google would want to do this.
I vote based on politicians' actions, unless contrary to my preconceptions. Often wrong, never uncertain. #iamthe99%
Google Voice is a call forwarding/routing and voicemail service, so it's doubtful that it will ever become a Siri competitor. Perhaps you're thinking of Google Voice Actions?
I paid $10 on Google Voice for calling a relative in the Middle East. However, I've paid $0 in ten years of using Google's other servces. Don't underestimate the price of calling non-western countries.
Maybe they like the free phone calls with the customers footing the bill
Do you have even the slightest idea of what you're talking about?
It was bad enough when the critics insisted that Google Voice was some VoIP service, and you now think it's a voice command system?
Google Voice is a really cool voicemail, call screening, redirection, and discounted international calls service. The only speech recognition it does is a transcription service for incoming voicemails (so you can read them rather than listen to them.) The transcriptions are rarely anything close to perfect, but usually good enough to get the gist.
It's not VoIP (although it's integrated quite nicely with Google Talk so it can be _part_ of a VoIP system if you want), it's not voice commands, it's a pretty unique and, in my view (disclaimer: I own ONE share of GOOG) awesome enhancement to your phone system.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Siri doesn't seem to work as well as it used to, according to Steve Wozniak. However, that seems to be more related to the results it provides than understanding voices (not counting the well-documented issues related to various non-US accents in English)
However, I don't think improving voice recognition is the only driver. I suspect Voice does the following:
1. Keeps people in Google
2. Increases the value proposition for Android with carriers who let you use Google Voice as your phone #
3. Broadens the suite of offerings for its business users
Google is collecting data on us in so many ways. The good thing is that they are in it for advertising dollars and don't care about personally tying us to our habits. Google wants to understand our connections, interactions, and preferences in a way that maximizes our value as a target market for someone else's product. When an advertiser wants to target a very tight demographic, Google wants to be able to produce the maximum number of near-perfect matches. Even more than that, they want to make sure that those ads go in front of not just the people who match, but the people who match AND act on such information.
In a way, Google is an anti-corporation in they they do take the long view of value. They're willing to give you free GV service for years, on the hunch that someone will eventually want to sell you something, and you'll be just the right person to buy it. When advertisers find out that their Google ads have a 10 or 20 or 100% better rate on the dollar because Google can find them just the right consumers, they'll keep coming back.
Voice recognition is coming of age, and it would cost an immense amount of money to collect and categorize the myriad of languages and dialects of the world. Not only does Google not have to set up satellite offices everywhere to collect data, the study participants are giving Google their time for free. Even one better - it's real, conversational speech. Google isn't getting some idealized, white room version of speech, they're getting what's actually out there in the wild.
The more Google understands, the better Google can profile you. Google won't just know what you were looking for last week, they'll be able to anticipate what you will need next week, next month, or next year. By understading and correlating buzz (little "b"), they could predict movements in people, in industries, in commodities, in governments. Those last ones start straying out of the "don't be evil" territory.
As long as Google stays corporate and focused on advertising, we're in great shape. As odd as it sounds, I think the world would be a much better place if the only ads I saw were for things I wanted or needed (then again, I don't have ED...). If Google were to get into commodities or market prediction, or involved in personal witch hunts, things could go down hill pretty quickly.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You are selling Google Voice a bit short. After a fuming incident with ATT and my land line, I cancelled my ATT service completely and installed this:
http://obihai.com/googlevoice.html
Using all of my previously installed phones, this device turned Google Voice into VOIP. It has been working flawlessly for a few months now to send and receive calls. I got the satisfaction of cancelling with ATT, saving a $30 per month bill, all for a 1 time fee of $50.
This was one of those "See what technology can do when not being impeded by greed" moments. It was a breath of fresh air.
Think about it. Google offers a lot of messaging offerings. Google Voice is the voice portion of videoconferencing. The software also supports the video part. If Google wants to offer an integrated messaging system (e-mail, IM, voice/audio, videoconference) to corporate customers, Google Voice plays a central part. And then there's Android: Google Voice is their version of the many "wireless calling" features on cel phones that let you make/receive phone calls using local wireless connectivity instead of the cel network (useful inside downtown office buildings where cel reception's poor).
Google Voice is one of those products that on it's own isn't particularly sellable, but once you have it you can build a lot of other things that are.
They provide practically no support. People have text messages and phantom calls that repeat over and over again. It's not meant for business use. Imagine sending a single text message and having it repeat forever and all you can do is send in little support form emails which they confirm they will not contact you back unless they want to. I know it happens because I have been receiving the same txt message over and over again for months now, with no resolution in sight.
I don't care what the reasons are as long as my Obi 110 keeps giving me free VoIP using Google Voice. I have my Obi hooked into my home phone line so every phone in the house can use it to make and receive calls just like the landline service that I cancelled. It works great and helps me keep our mobile minutes on the minimum plan.
Did you not just answer your own question before you asked it? The reason it's being given away is because your participation is valuable to them. Sure, it might go away at some point, but it's doubtful it will just be turned off without warning. On the other hand solving speech to text is not a trivial thing, especially considering language is constantly evolving, if they're deriving benefit from being able to gather this data then it's not something they'll suddenly stop gaining benefit from in the near future.
Install? I never installed anything to use it; what are you talking about?
If it were another company, I'd say building a subscriber base and selling out to a big company later on. But this is Google - they are the big company. :)
Probably a few points of confusion here. One being what it is that you are referring to. Voice recognition, not the Google Voice app, I assume?
First: looking back, I didn't digest the GP's post well enough. I have no idea if installing Google Voice prompts you to use the personalized voice recognition. I'm not sure why it would, either. Someone else would have to clarify this point, as I have not installed Google Voice or set up a number with them.
However, voice-related parts of the OS - voice search, voice commands, etc. - does have the option to use personalized recognition. I'm not sure whether this installs anything or not, and whether it does may be different from Android 2.x to 3.x to 4.x. I just enabled it on my ICS phone, and it doesn't install anything, just notifies be that enabling it causes my voice data to be stored and associated with my account (which should be obvious).
Third, I wonder if what the GP is confusing with the personalized voice recognition is actually the Text-To-Speech (TTS) package, which if I remember correctly only a neutered version exists by default in the OS, but can be "upgraded" for free if the user finds it useful or an app suggests it (Vlingo come to mind). This, of course, would have nothing to do with recognition of your voice, but could make some sense for Google Voice.
I vote based on politicians' actions, unless contrary to my preconceptions. Often wrong, never uncertain. #iamthe99%
OK - I'm curious - why *ONE* share of GOOG ?
It gets information on you. How else do you think Google makes its money.
It knows who you are.
Google Pay = your credit cards
Google voice = Your phone numbers, all who call you and all you call.
GMail = all your mail is indexed and attachments scanned
Apps = All your docs and data
contacts = huge DB that is easily crossed referenced
android phone = gps location, data usage, etc..
Just add all that to the searches, calendar items, name it.
It's a 1 stop shop for all things info about you. The more info they have, the more valuable it becomes.
All they need is a google connected toilet and refrigerator to complete the picture
I have an Asterisk 1.8 server set up that routes outgoing International calls via Google Talk, outgoing office calls via Google Talk, and incoming Google Talk calls to my office line. Obviously as they're linked, the outgoing CLI is my Google Voice number, and calls to my GV number result in my office phone ringing. But it's Google Talk doing the grunt work, not GV.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Google Voice was originally a startup named GrandCentral, and it was invented to fill a personal need for a phone number that is independent of the phone carriers. Presumably, that need still exists.
Have a nice time.
Because they're effing expensive!
I'd buy more long term, but Google doesn't pay dividends, and I usually only invest in dividend stocks. But I like Google.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
My Asian and Indian coworkers can't use Siri, and most have stopped trying out of frustration. It can't understand their accent, and doesn't seem to get any better over time. That is the most obvious reason why Google would want to do this.
I second this. On my android phone (Samsung Epic 4G), go to the language setting for voice-recognition. The list of supported language and ascent is long and includes both Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese. FYI, there is no Indian, but there is "English (Indian)". Sure, full sentence recognition and semantic matching is not up to Siri's par in well spoken English as far as I can tell, but it works well enough for my parents, who can not really use a computer to input Chinese. Now, It is not clear to me if GV is responsible for their non-English recognition, but I wouldn't be surprised. I am also not sure if iPhone4(s) can do this, but I suspect that if it can, some of my more fanboyish friends would be jumping up and down to show me, who due to my hate of iTunes, refuses to use most hardware from Apple since iPod1.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
This is the first time I've seen Anonymous Coward be the only one who gave good information. It's the call termination fees that they're collecting that makes it a very profitable operation.
With multiple phone companies, a flaw was found in the way phone service was billed. Big call centers could locate in small communities; they might have a few outgoing lines that they paid for, and they'd receive millions of inbound calls. The small town phone company would have to build enough capacity for those millions of calls but could only charge for the small number of physical lines in their service area.
The solution was call termination fees; the originating phone company pays a small fee to the destination phone company. It's just a fraction of a cent, but if there's a large number of inbound calls it can add up. This solved the imbalance in the phone system - and created an opportunity for VOIP gateways and services like Grand Central / Google Voice.
When you call one of those numbers, they terminate your call and pocket the fee. Then they ship your call out on the internet as a VOIP call. Whenever you see some service offering a free incoming phone number - it's being paid for by the call termination fees.
If we move to VoIP, the likely result is that the USF will be applied to broadband service. There's nothing wrong with that.
In a case where people are buying Internet access and phone service, VoIP can be a cost saving. That said, I think the best argument for VoIP is that it's a considerably more powerful service than POTS without the high price of ISDN, not that it's a cheap way to rid yourself of your home phone service.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What you suggested in a previous post:
it will make your voice transcription more accurate.
This is entirely accurate, it simply helps your phone know what you are speaking. I (Apparently) have some kind of accent, which makes it difficult for voice commands to work correctly (or speak-through menu systems when I call customer service lines), training your phone to know your voice just makes it easier to use.
Pig Latin
It works fantastically, and is super awesome.