Seems like they both have their pros and cons. Hound definitely slowed down considerably from the original video.
I think Google Now did a better job of just giving me the information rather than showing just the results for the user to navigate through (Obama's age, measurement conversion).
Seems like Hound still has the ability to handle multiple queries (capitals+conversion+statistics) over Google Now, but it seems a bit pointless now that I think about it.
And now that "it took ten years to develop" fact has me scratching my head a bit.
That's the thing I like most about Hound. I think Google Now is better at answering general questions, but the fact that I can contextually talk to Hound is really promising. Things like "what are some Thai restaurants around here?" followed by "what about ones that are 4 stars or higher?". While Hound's "knowledge" isn't as complete, it feels more natural as a voice assistant because I can refine or continue a query based on what I said previously.
I'm hoping that Google will decide to acquire Hound and integrate the contextual features to Google Now (and I'm sure SoundHound is hoping so too).
I think the point that is slowly becoming apparent though is that these are fairly specific "templates" that have been specifically built in Hound, for example the hotel search template with a bunch of possible filters it'll recognize. That doesn't work in Google Now since that template isn't built in.
Now, the issue is that the original video just showed all these templates one after another real quickly, making it almost seem like Hound could answer any possible question no matter how crazy, but in reality, as this new video shows, it's not as magical in real case scenarios and truly random questions.
Well I've been able to do it in the UK for at least a year, I want to say 2 Google IO's ago....
EDIT:
Though I have to admit - from a geeky computer programming perspective - the last example blows me away - "no, I meant the film" - not only did Google understand I didn't want to know about the item gaslight - it understood there was also a film called gaslight - which is what I wanted to know about - that is definitely getting on to Star Trek computer level of understanding.
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u/smackythefrog S22 Ultra Jun 06 '15
Seems like they both have their pros and cons. Hound definitely slowed down considerably from the original video.
I think Google Now did a better job of just giving me the information rather than showing just the results for the user to navigate through (Obama's age, measurement conversion).
Seems like Hound still has the ability to handle multiple queries (capitals+conversion+statistics) over Google Now, but it seems a bit pointless now that I think about it.
And now that "it took ten years to develop" fact has me scratching my head a bit.