What search is to the web is what Google wants its Assistant to be to devices. Yesterday, Google announced the integration of its Assistant with the Pixel handsets and Google Home, and indicated how these would work with multiple services, including YouTube, Maps, Street View, among others. Rick Osterloh, SVP (Hardware) at Google said that "Building hardware and software together lets us take advantage of the Google assistant", and that "The next innovation will take at the intersection of hardware and software with AI at the center." Now we've seen the Google Assistant, and its integration with Google's messaging app Allo. Last month, Google, at an event in Delhi, announced that the Assistant will support Hindi in its messaging app Allo, and will eventually be integrated into more products. Some of those products were announced yesterday: namely, the Pixel phone, which has the Assistant integrated, and Google Home, an audio based device which can be used to search and play music, book services, and integrate with supporting devices such as Chromecast. On screen context Google Pixel is the first phone with the Google Assistant built in. The phone accepts voice commands, and has a single hot button for search using the voice command, effectively replacing Google Now. Users can use the assistant to send an SMS, or search for information based on what's on screen. What was remarkable about the demonstration was that the assistant (unlike in the Allo app), can determine context from what is on the phone screen because of this…
