When it comes to making money, Google has one mission and one mission alone: get its free apps and services in as many hands as possible. That’s the very reason why Android was such a brilliant move on Google’s part. By building a top-notch iOS rival and giving it away for free to any device maker that wants it, Google has created a scenario where well over a billion people access its apps and services constantly each day. The more they use their phones, the more data Google is able to collect. And the more data Google collects, the better it can target ads. As we discussed in an old article titled “The truth about Google and evil,” Google does so much to help people, but it’s an advertising company first and foremost.
That brings us to Google Assistant, the company’s answer Apple’s Siri assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. Google Assistant is already viewed by many as being more capable and more helpful than Siri, and just this week Google began rolling it out to Android phones running Android 6.0 or later. Google’s mission to get its new AI assistant in as many hands as possible won’t end with Android, of course, and now we have our strongest indication yet that Assistant is on its way to the iPhone.
With the commotion at the annual Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain winding down, Belgian blog Geekster managed to catch up with Gummi Hafsteinsson, a Product Management Director at Google who is in charge of the Google Assistant project. Hafsteinsson had a lot to say about Google’s hot new AI assistant, of course, but there was one portion of the interview that was of particular interest.
When asked about the possibility of Google Assistant coming to iOS and Apple’s iPhone, the exec gave a textbook non-answer that, for anyone who knows the industry, is pretty much an answer. “I do not think we have anything to announce at this point,” Hafsteinsson said. “But I think the general philosophy is that we would like to have the Assistant available to as many people as possible.”
So there you have it, iPhone users. Google has nothing to announce at this point, but if you’re a gambler, the smart money is on yes, Google Assistant will make its way to iOS in the future.
