GOOGLE SEARCHES FOR ITS VOICE
Deep inside the Googleplex, a small group of writers is huddling around a whiteboard that is plastered with ideas. These read like notes-to-self that Jack Skellington might’ve made: “Halloween survival kit,” “How to defeat monsters.” One in particular stands out to Ryan Germick, a tall and wiry 37-year-old. “People did not like ‘smell my feet’ last year,” he says, laughing. His colleague Emma Coats chimes in to explain:
“It was trick or treat, and one response was ‘smell my feet.’ People thumbed-down the heck out of that.”
Germick has spent the afternoon bouncing between brainstorming meetings like this one, in which Googlers debate life’s big questions, like whether the sound of a bubbling cauldron or distant howling is spookier. All of which is part of his job as principal personality designer for Google Assistant, the company’s voice-activated helper found on a wide range of smartphones and its Home smart speaker, which first went on sale last fall.
It’s August, but Germick’s team is grappling with what users might ask Google on Halloween and why. Will people turn to Assistant for costume ideas? Or will they want to hear a seasonally appropriate joke? The key to answering these kinds of questions, Assistant’s creators maintain, is not to think of Google as most of us have come to—a dispassionate dispenser of information—but as a dynamic character. “At the very simplest level,” says Lilian Rincon, director of product management for Assistant, “it’s, Can I just talk to Google like I’m talking to you right now?”
This is harder than it sounds. And over the past few years, developing voice-enabled gadgets has become one of Silicon Valley’s most hotly contested technology races. Assistant is available on phones from the likes of Samsung and LG that run the Android operating system. Amazon offers its take,
