What’s the difference between Google Assistant and Google Voice Search?

Introducing Google Assistant and Voice Search

Google Assistant and Google Voice Search are two voice-activated services developed by Google that allow users to perform tasks and get information by speaking to their devices. While they share some similarities, there are key differences between the two.

Google Voice Search was first introduced in 2008 as a way to enable voice queries on Android phones. According to Digital Trends, it enabled users to do simple voice searches and commands like setting alarms, opening apps, or getting sports scores. Over time, it gained more capabilities like launching actions and apps by voice.

Google Assistant, first unveiled in 2016, built upon Google Voice Search by allowing for natural two-way conversations and integrating with more services and smart home devices. As described by Armia, Google Assistant provides personalized results, understands context and follows up questions, and allows users to control smart home devices hands-free.

In summary, Google Voice Search paved the way for voice queries on mobile, while Google Assistant aims to be a virtual assistant that can have natural conversations to get things done across devices.

Voice Query Functions

Both Google Assistant and Voice Search allow users to search for information using natural voice queries. When a user says “Hey Google” or “OK Google”, the Assistant activates and listens for the spoken request. It can respond back with information, take actions, or launch apps based on the voice command. For example, you can ask questions like “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?” or give commands such as “OK Google, set a timer for 5 minutes.”

According to Google’s support article, Voice Search allows you to “use your voice to search for helpful information” on Android devices. It can look up basic information, translate phrases, set reminders and alarms, play music, and more. Google Assistant builds on this with additional features for managing tasks, controlling smart home devices, accessing third-party services, and holding natural conversations.

Both leverage Google’s natural language processing to understand context and intent from the voice queries. Overall, Voice Search provides voice-initiated search, while Assistant offers a more robust conversational experience.

Personalized Results

One key difference between Google Assistant and Voice Search is that Assistant can provide personalized results and recommendations tailored to you, while Voice Search simply provides generic search results. When you set up Voice Match on Assistant and link it to your Google account, Assistant is able to understand it’s you speaking and can provide results based on your preferences, habits, location, schedule, and search history. For example, you can ask Google Assistant about your day and it will tell you your schedule, commute time, reminders, and more. Or you can ask it questions like “What’s the weather today?” and it will know to provide the forecast for your area specifically.

According to Google’s blog post, there are a few ways to personalize your Assistant experience:

• Set up Voice Match so Assistant recognizes your voice
• Allow Personal Results on your Assistant devices and in settings
• Train Assistant by using it more and giving it feedback on results

With Voice Match enabled, you can also access your own playlists, calendar, contacts, reminders, and more through Assistant. This tailored, personalized experience is what sets Google Assistant apart from the more generic Voice Search.

Natural Conversation

One of the key differences between Google Assistant and Voice Search is how they handle natural conversation. Google Assistant is designed to have more natural back-and-forth conversations using natural language processing and AI, whereas Voice Search only allows for single voice queries or commands.

Google Assistant can engage in ongoing dialogue and respond contextually based on the conversation history. It can understand nuance, colloquial language, and complex questions better than Voice Search. Google Assistant tries to mimic human conversation patterns like pauses and affirmations. The Assistant can ask clarifying questions if it needs more context to fulfill a request.

In contrast, Voice Search relies on single commands or queries stated clearly. It does not maintain conversation state or context between queries. The technology focuses solely on recognizing speech and transcribing the audio into text to return search results. Voice Search provides less personalized responses tailored to the user compared to Google Assistant.

Overall, Google Assistant goes beyond Voice Search in understanding natural language similar to human interactions. Its conversational AI allows for richer voice experiences than the basic voice query functions of Voice Search. Google is clearly focused on making Assistant handle natural conversation seamlessly as voice interfaces become more prominent.

Sources:

Google’s Voice Search and Assistant: The Future of Conversational Search

What are the differences between Google Assistant, Google Now, and Voice Search?

Device Integration

Google Assistant is deeply integrated with Android devices and Google Home smart speakers to enable hands-free voice control. On Android phones and tablets, the Google Assistant app allows users to access the assistant via voice commands, chat, or typing. Google Assistant is the default voice assistant on most Android devices, providing seamless access without any additional setup. Users can launch apps, ask questions, control smart home devices, and more using natural conversational commands.

With Google Home devices like the Nest Hub, Nest Audio, and Nest Mini, users can interact with Google Assistant using only their voice, no screens required. Google Assistant offers robust connectivity to these smart speakers to play music, get information, manage reminders and calendars, control smart home devices, and more. The assistant is always listening for the “Hey Google” wake phrase on Google Home.

Compared to Android integration, Google Home offers a screen-less experience focused entirely on voice commands and verbal responses via the built-in speaker. Both provide easy access to Google Assistant, with Android focused on mobile control via voice, chat, or typing and Google Home optimized for voice-only interaction.

According to the Google Assistant for Developers guide (source), deep integration with Android and Google Home devices allows the Google Assistant to deliver a seamless, helpful experience to users.

Third-Party Actions

One key difference between Google Assistant and Voice Search is that Assistant allows third-party developers to build actions and integrations, while Voice Search is limited to Google’s own capabilities. According to the Actions console, developers can build actions to let users control smart home devices, find answers, play games, and more with Assistant.

For example, through third-party actions, Assistant can control lights, doors, coffee machines, and many other internet-connected devices using the Smart Home integration. Developers can build conversational actions and integrations using the Actions SDK that allow natural back-and-forth conversations. There are also tools to build interactive games and visual responses. Overall, the extensibility provided by third-party actions gives Google Assistant far more capabilities than Voice Search.

Predictive Features

One of the key differences between Google Assistant and Voice Search is that Assistant has more predictive capabilities and can be proactive in providing helpful information and reminders. According to Google’s overview of conversational actions, the Assistant can anticipate user needs and proactively provide relevant suggestions and notifications. For example, it can remind you about upcoming appointments, flight times, traffic conditions before commuting, and other timely information.

The Assistant leverages Google’s advanced AI to study your habits and usual routines. Over time, it becomes familiar with the people, places, and activities that matter most to you. With user permission, it connects the dots across services like Calendar, Maps, Gmail, and more to deliver personalized, proactive help. Rather than just passively waiting for voice commands, it aims to streamline tasks by already having the right information ready when you need it.

This goes beyond Voice Search by not just reacting to queries, but actively offering suggestions and completing tasks on your behalf. The continual assistance makes interactions feel more natural and human-like. Overall, the predictive capabilities allow the Assistant to provide a smarter, more customized experience.

Multilingual Support

Google Assistant and Google Voice Search differ in their multilingual capabilities. Google Assistant supports over 30 languages and variants including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, and Portuguese (Source). Users can switch between languages easily either through voice commands or in the Google Assistant settings.

In comparison, Google Voice Search has more limited language support. It can understand voice queries in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish. However, it does not allow switching languages through voice commands like Google Assistant. Users would need to manually change the language setting on their device to alter the input language for Google Voice Search (Source).

Overall, Google Assistant provides far broader multilingual capabilities compared to Google Voice Search. Its ability to understand natural voice commands for switching languages makes Google Assistant more user-friendly for interactions in multiple languages.

Availability

Google Voice Search and Google Assistant have different availability across platforms. According to Google’s support article, Google Voice Search is available on Android devices by tapping the microphone icon on the Google search bar or Google app. However, it is being replaced by Google Assistant over time.

In contrast, Google Assistant is available across more platforms including Android phones and tablets, iPhones, Google Home smart speakers, Android TVs, Android Auto in cars, and more. Google has been expanding support for Google Assistant to be available on over 30,000 devices from over 1,000 brands. This allows Google Assistant to be accessible across platforms for a consistent voice experience.

The Future

Google Assistant is likely to continue improving and evolving thanks to advances in AI. Some key developments we may see in the future include:

Enhanced conversational abilities powered by large language models like LaMDA and Bard, allowing for more natural back-and-forth dialogue (https://www.wired.com/story/google-assistant-multi-modal-upgrade-bard-generative-ai/). This could make the Assistant feel more human-like.

Greater personalization and context-awareness, with the Assistant able to understand user preferences and habits over time. It may proactively provide suggestions tailored to each user without needing to be explicitly asked (https://readwrite.com/google-assistant-is-getting-a-major-upgrade/).

Expanded multimodal abilities, allowing the Assistant to understand and generate responses using a combination of text, images, audio, and video. This could enable visually-rich interactions.

New smart home capabilities, device integrations, and third-party actions, so users can control more aspects of their lives through voice commands to the Assistant.

Overall, we can expect Google Assistant to become faster, smarter, more personalized, and more conversational in the years ahead thanks to advancements in AI.