Actions on Google opens up Google Assistant for use by third party developers

At the Google October Hardware event, Google announced a number of new products. At the presentation, Google CEO Sundar Pichai talked about how there is a disruptive paradigm shift in technology roughly every ten years. Household computing, the world wide web, and mobile have been the major transformations so far, and it is time for another change. Pichai believes that the world will move from a mobile first world to an AI first world. The AI offering by Google, which is embedded in products such as Home, Allo and Pixel, is Google Assistant. Actions on Google has opened up Google Assistant for use by third parties. From December, developers will be able to offer services through Google Assistant. Consumer electronics manufacturers will also be able to offer Google Assistant on their devices. Individual users at home will also be able to hack together a conversational device at home, with say a Raspberry Pi and Google Assistant. For developers who want to integrate their services into Assistant there are two types of actions. Direct actions are straightforward commands, such as turn on the lights to a home automation kit, or send a text to Dad, for an instant messaging service. Conversational actions are more complex, and require some kind of feedback or response from the user. This may require several back and forth interactions to execute a request. Ordering from a store or booking a taxi are use case scenarios. Interested developers can sign up for the program to receive news and updates from Google.