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Microsoft To Acquire SwiftKey Predictive Keyboard Technology Company For $250M (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: SwiftKey has been one of the more popular predictive keyboard offerings in the mobile space since it was first released in beta form on the Android market back in 2010. What made SwiftKey so appealing was its intelligent predictive texting technology. SwiftKey isn't a simple keyboard replacement. Rather, the software uses a combination of artificial intelligence technologies that give it the ability to learn usage patterns and predict the next word the user most likely intends to type. SwiftKey refines its predictions, learning over time by analyzing data from SMS, Facebook, and Twitter messages, then offering predictions based on the text being entered at the time. It is estimated that SwiftKey is installed on upwards of 500 million mobile devices. According to reports, Microsoft is apparently buying the UK-based company for a cool $250 Million. What Microsoft intends to do with SwiftKey is not clear just yet, but the company has been purchasing mobile apps at a good clip as of late.
The app market is where the smart money is now.
(Not games though, Zynga's $180M purchase of Draw Something was insanely moronic.)
Summation 2
Watch the police and the tax man miss me
So what's everybody's favorite alternative, since SwiftKey is owned by a company that is nowadays renowned for its spyware and keylogging?
Does SwiftKey phone home what users are typing? $250 million seems a lot for an input method, more reasonable for a large set of data for them to analyze.
It's the first app I install when setting up a device. I hope Microsoft doesn't ruin it.
Microsoft really wants everyone's keystrokes, don't they? What other rationale is there to spend even $1 on a company that develops and maintains a product only to give it away to its customers free of charge? If decide to ever go back to Android, it'll be stock keyboards for me from here on out!
It's how they make predictive typing work.
Half of me is delighted that W10 could actually get a useful keyboard. Half of me thinks they will utterly fumble the transition and, like most things MS tries to bolt on, it will suck horribly but will become the standard (And only) keyboard on W10 touch.
All of me knows that they will be using the data to improve their marketing side of the business. I'd worry about that, but I sold my soul (or at least all of my worldly data) to Google a decade ago, and it's always easier the second time.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Based on recent attempts to push telemetry via updates and the monitoring built in to Windows 10, using SwiftKey as a key logger to gather information on mobile users seems possible.
I hope they didn't buy it just to kill it for android. Like they did with skype that is becoming more broken on linux every month.
captcha: halved (like Nokia maybe?)
I'll save you all some time. IT'S A TRAP! Embrace, extend, extinguish! MS Anti-Trust!!!
What Microsoft intends to do with SwiftKey is not clear just yet
Ruin it, then stuff it full of Windows/Office money in the vain hope that this will hide their incompetence at diversifying.
Microsoft learned a long time ago that buying stuff that people already like is far easier than creating stuff that people like.
Log in or piss off.
So, what's a good alternative to Swiftkey?
Actually, I'm going to wait and see what happens. I use Swiftkey on my tablets (swype on my phones), and I'm not going to knee-jerk abandon it.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Maybe Microsoft is acquiring more weapons for its mobile patents war chest. Or defense, given the madness of the IP landscape that ensures only the big boys can innovate.
I find the Windows Phone's default swipe keyboard to be the best I have used. I find it marginally better than both HTC's swipe keyboard and also Google's keyboard.
Predictive keyboard? Sounds like autocorrect to me. And I hate those things. They make too many assumptions. I mean, how does it know I wasn't going to write about my "gigantic throbbing coconspirator"?
"Ok let's try this out, M, swipe I, swipe C"
[clippy appeaers] "Say, it seems like you're trying to type Microsoft, should I just add it to the text box for you?"
"Go away you little..."
"Say, are you trying to type Fuschia? Let me add that for you..."
Microsoft is trying to 'innovate' another revolution it missed.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
M$ is as bad as Oracle.
Everything they buy/touch goes to shit.
At a certain size, you can lo longer directly spend research money fast enough on just your own work. The only way get enough research results is to buy up results where you find them.
It would autocorrect and fail to detect what I typed. I guess if my friends had English names and I wasn't frequently discussing programming languages then maybe it would work better. (even "printf" fails to come up consistently)
Microsoft has bought yet another company. The people who work for the company are smarter than Microsoft, and make great cool technology, but they also want to be rich. So they sell their great cool technology and all the intellectual property that surrounds it to Microsoft, where that same cool technology goes and sits on a shelf and dies. Some marketing bunny at M$ sees the tech. and says to themself "Wowzers! Thet kewel technoligie! We needz to git summa thet!" And so M$ buys company. Then someone else at M$ says "wee kneed to intemagrate thet inta are uther stuf", and assigns a drone team to put the square peg in the round hole. And the rollout date is determined by a meeting between marketing and management. First they get an assessment from the drone team "how long da ya thynk itll takeya", then they cut that amount of time in half. If there is a big sales opportunity sooner than that (like Christmas) then they go for the shorter time. Then they tell the drone team "makit sew. Gidder dun. Waddever!" Then the new technology is rolled out with the drivers borken and 3/4 of the functionality lost. Team M$ then declares: "Its not just good, its good enough!" The technology then dies on a shelf somewhere.
At least on iOS, Swype works acceptably well even with out 'full access' (i.e. without access to network communications).
Just because you already made a deal with Mr.Scratch don't try to convince the rest of us to do so.
If an app has learned enough about your working vocabulary and writing style to predict what you're going to type next, I bet it can figure out where you're doing the typing, no matter how anonymous you think you are.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
If the deal does go thru, I will be uninstalling Swiftkey.
Problem is, I doubt the stock GOOGLE keyboard is an exemplar of anonymity and privacy either.