Google has taken over a startup called Superpod, reports Business Standard. Superpod developed an app that allows users to ask questions and get quick answers from experts. With the acquisition, the ability of Google Assistant to answer users’ questions should be improved.
Superpod was founded in 2016 by former Google employees Sophia Yang and William Li. Google would have paid nearly $60 million to add the founders to their team and buy part of the resources of Superpod. The acquisition has now been confirmed in Fortune. However, no financial details were mentioned by the company in that confirmation.
Superpod closed its app in September last year. The founders then wrote: “We can’t share details at the moment, but we’re travelling to the same North Star and are very excited about the future.”
Assistant
Google is continuously improving the Assistant’s capabilities to compete with services similar to the Amazon Alexa. Amazon Alexa is more popular worldwide, but the Google Assistant outperformed Alexa and other speech assistants in a recent test by Loup Ventures. Last year, Google’s voice assistant answered 87.9 percent of the questions correctly, compared to 81.1 percent in 2017.
The speech assistant appeared in the Dutch language in July last year, which also included a new name. The Dutch version is called the Google Assistant. This version also understands parts of the Dutch language that are only normal here, such as the word ‘Appie’ instead of Albert Heijn.
In addition, several Dutch apps have been added to the Assistant’s action list, such as the Albert Heijn app, Bol.com and NOS. It is possible to look up recipes via the app of the Albert Heijn.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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