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Microsoft Is Acquiring London’s AI-Driven Swiftkey for $250M
- guelo 11y agoIf you have the app installed I would suggest turning off auto-update from the store so that you can keep the keyboard as-is before Microsoft starts meddling with it.
- what_ever 11y agoEh. Microsoft hasn't really messed up the previous Android apps they have bought. I feel people have more issues with all data going to Microsoft now.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoThey've made it clear they want to be a viable presence on Android. Ruining an app like SwiftKey isn't in their best interest. But hating on Microsoft is still popular for some people.
- largote 11y agoDAE M$?
- guelo 11y agoYea I'm an irrational "hater". I'll just leave this here http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/10/microsoft-announces-plans-to-discontinue-the-popular-sunrise-calendar-app http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/10/microsoft-announces-plans... You never know what these giant companies will do. But whatever, it was just a suggestion. I don't care if you install the new Microsoft Swiftkey updates.
- tdkl 11y agoYeah the forced Windows 10 adoption despite being a bag of dicks plus added telemetry practices with dark patterns make them a very well suited buyer for an app which can collect all typed data on your smartphone.
- vanous 11y agoI just did the same, but the problem is that (I only suspect here without research) the keyboard calls home every so often so your data isn't yours anymore. I am now searching for a new keyboard...
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoWow. People don't talk about it too much in the same breath as all of the new trendy AI stuff, but Swiftkey has been doing incredibly smart input work for years, and is probably the most actually-useful AI app available for Android. I think I had it since it's earliest days, like 2009 or 2010?
- ilyaeck 11y agoIn what way is it better/different, compared to the default Google keyboard (which is not too bad, either)?
- HelloMcFly 11y agoI'd like to know as well. I used to use SwiftKey a few years back and loved it. I switched to a Windows phone for awhile then back to my Android. After using the stock Android keyboard for a few months I thought I'd try SwiftKey. Without question, I found SwiftKey required far, far more corrections than the WP or Android phone did. I had to stop swiping at least twice as much to fix an incorrect word. I just thought that other keyboards had sufficiently caught up since I stopped using it, and SwiftKey didn't improve. What did I miss?
- bmelton 11y agoSo, a big part of what makes SwiftKey work as well for me as it does is the learning features. I use those features to scan my Facebook / Twitter / E-mail, and it's able to learn how to predict my typing quirks better than anything else I've ever used. Is it possible that you skipped that step?
- HelloMcFly 11y agoVery possible. I just installed it and started typing as per normal, I didn't do anything special to make it learn my style. Unfortunately the first (and only) two days I used it the output just wasn't good enough. Maybe I'll try it one more time and stick with it for two weeks while exploring learning options.
- TheRealWatson 11y agoAwesome exit for them but, darn it, there goes another great app. Destined to become a shadow of its former self.
- outworlder 11y agoYeah, another entry for ourincrediblejourney.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoIncredible journeys are when a purchase is immediately couple with a shutdown of the app. We've seen no sign that's happening at this point, and with the size of its install base (half billion users in one form or another), it'd be a crazy mistake for Microsoft to make.
- HappyTypist 11y agoNot immediately. It can be used when an app is later shut down after a small to moderate period of time; it doesn't have to be immediate.
- scholia 11y agoMicrosoft has already launched dozens of apps on Android and iOS, and there are several it has already bought in. That's part of its cross-platform strategy. There's no guarantee that Microsoft won't rename an app, or incorporate the technology into an existing app, but it has no reason to pay $250m for something just to shut it down...
- mizzao 11y agoIn this case, the acquisition was by Microsoft's Technology and Research division, not a product or service group. It seems like the goal is to integrate SwiftKey technology into many of Microsoft's mobile applications.
- jonesb6 11y ago
- rcpt 11y agoHitting the middle button on SwiftKey "neural alpha" repeatedly: I have a few questions for you to see if you can get me a copy of the letter to the office and I will be in touch with you to discuss the position with you and your family are doing well and that you are not the only one I have to say that I am a beautiful person and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you and I love you
- princeb 11y agothat is amusing. there isn't swiftkey but on Windows Phone but there is some native predictive typing which is pretty good - i try to remember to use it because it's actually useful at times but more often than not i revert to simply typing out all the words out of habit instead.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoDoing the same for iOS's built in keyboard: The first half of the day before I get a follow back on my way home from work to be the first half of the year of high quality of life and the first half of the year of high quality of life and the first half of the day before I get a follow back on my way home from work to be the first half Or in German (seeded with "I"): Ich bin nicht so viel zu viel für mich nicht so viel zu viel für mich nicht so gut und dir auch ein paar Minuten vor Schluss machen wir uns in den nächsten Wochen in den nächsten Jahren nicht so viel wie geht das auch noch nicht einmal mehr die Kraft des faktischen der Stadt zu gehen oder nicht mehr zu sagen das es dir gut gehen lassen und dann auch die Möglichkeit zu Hause zu sein scheint es nicht so gut und dir auch ein paar Minuten
- chipperyman573 11y agoIt always starts looping with "I love you", but I only type those once or twice a day. I'm not sure why it always ends up falling to that.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
- cwyers 11y agoThis is frustrating, Microsoft announced that they were going to port the excellent Windows Phone keyboard to iOS and I was hoping it would come to Android too.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoWindows Phone's predictions was nothing much, though. SwiftKey is capable of supporting multiple keyboard layouts, their magic is that prediction software. It's entirely possible/likely that Microsoft will take their layout that people like, and offer it with SwiftKey as the predictive text feature attached to it.
- andrea_s 11y agoI've recently switched from a Windows Phone back to an Android one, and from my experience WP keyboard suggestions are usually more on point compared to the Android ones. Only thing I miss about the old phone, really :-) I will be trying SwiftKey now.
- TheAnimus 11y agoI find the windows phone keyboard suggestions much better than any other I've used. Despite now having an iPhone 6s from work I still use a WP as my daily go to because it's much better at writing a whatsapp or email message, even if the 'other' apps suck. I'm also heavily dyslexic, so I might be an outliar.
- soroso 11y agoJust uninstalled it.
- cant_kant 11y agoThe Financial Times says: "Nonetheless, one person close to the company said the sale price was lower than investors might have hoped for a couple of years ago, when Swiftkey was among the most popular smartphone apps in the world." It is an unfortunately timed exit. If they had sold even a year ago, they could have done much better.
- fillskills 11y agoIs it just me that I find Microsoft implementation of swype typing better than swiftkey on iOS (I haven't used Android). I hope they are using the buyout for swiftkeys spread on android and iOS, or to get more information about what users are searching/typing. And I hope we can see the AI on Windows 10 swype feature percolate into swiftkey products.
- cooper12 11y ago> Here’s how SwiftKey works: That video was not the explanation I was hoping for, but a voiceover ad...
- melbourne_mat 11y agoIt's a good acquisition in that it's a great product used by many people. I can't help thinking about the privacy angle - Microsoft gets to capture everything you type into your Android keyboard. And yes I wear my tinfoil hat often.
- tempestn 11y agoNot only that; you can (significantly) enhance SwiftKey's predictions by giving it access to the archives of your gmail, facebook, etc. accounts. One would hope that Microsoft would at least use that data in an anonymized fashion, but regardless, the value would obviously be huge. I was surprised it wasn't listed in the article where it outlined the the value Microsoft would get from the purchase.
- matthewcford 11y agoHaving worked on this, the data is converted into your own personalised language model per account and then sent down to the app (at least when we worked on it, the data wasn't aggregated/stored).
- executesorder66 11y agoI was very upset when I saw this. It took me forever to find the right "keyboard" for my phone, and now Microsoft owns it.
- tn13 11y agoHonestly, I think Microsoft or any large company on FCC's radar and media's radar is better option than some company in a distant country.
- executesorder66 11y agoAnd how has being on the FCC's radar stopped Microsoft from their unethical spying and total lack of concern for people's privacy? (mainly via Win10)
- ethanpil 11y agoIMHO, the stock keyboard on Surface devices is barely functional. It looks nice but lacks a lot of features that I am used to from my (non Microsoft) mobile devices. I am hoping this acquisition is a move to improve that technology.
- fencepost 11y agoAs a person who has and uses (lightly) a Windows Mobile phone running the Windows 10 beta, I'd love to see it become a/the keyboard option on there. The native keyboard isn't terrible once you learn some of the things it can do, but it still pales in comparison to SwiftKey, and I don't even make full use of the predictive buttons because I'm so used to sweeping. I'll note that in the search / address bar of Firefox, if I type "ne" the three options it predicts are "ne", "news.ycombinator.com", and "news.google.com", where the same entry in a text field gives more expected values.
- melted 11y agoAbsolutely ridiculous price for something most people don't even know about.
- tdkl 11y agoThere is no other keyboard out there which can predict multiple languages without clumsy language switching. Fuck, now all the data will be mined by Microsoft. Another great product FUBARed, just like Sunrise.
- reitanqild 11y agoFor me Swiftkey was a favourite until it broke in so many subtle and not so subtle ways: insisting on changing i to I (i is the local word for in so incredibly frustrating), other times it will split combined words making me look like an English-speaking or worse, local teenager. No amount of tweaking, correcting, updating or even filing bugs seems to work. So now I use the default keyboard.
- soft_dev_person 11y agoJust uncheck Autocorrect. Makes it so much more useful (for Scandinavian languages and multi-language modes), even though it requires a bit more mental presence when typing.
- philliphaydon 11y agoAhhh I can't stand swift key. Windows flo or what ever it is kills this already. Swift key doesn't learn and consistently suggests wrong words even after 2 years of use. Personal opinion.
- jinst8gmi 11y agoI wonder if this is going to have implications for Swiftkey's privacy policy and data mining etc. if Windows 10 is anything to go by...
- derFunk 11y agoI'm using SwiftKey constantly for normal typing, and it's got a great autocorrect feature. Not using the AI (word suggestion/prediction) at all. Yet it drives me regularly insane, especially when typing technical terms, abbreviations and http addresses, because it just refuses to accept that there sometimes just has to be NO space after a dot. Also writing uppercase seems to be a hard task for SwiftKey. I'd like them to enhance the AI this way: if SwiftKey recognizes permanent violations of their built in rules, just ask the user if he wants SwiftKey to ignore certain rules. I assume something can be configured, but I didn't even bother searching for it (because lazy and afraid to get lost in the huge settings menu).
- soft_dev_person 11y agoCorrectly configured/tagged text input fields usually don't have these issues (Android) and makes SwiftKey behave correctly. But in Chrome (for example), the address bar is not only for URLs, so your mileage may vary.
- bronlund 11y agoOkey. I'm trying Fleksy then.
- Gabriel_h 11y agoCongratulations to the team at SwiftKey! I know there's a high concentration of awesome engineering talent there. So I wonder whether this acquisition is primarily for the talent or for the potential monetisation opportunities?
- ionised 11y agoI've honestly found my SwiftKey experience getting significantly worse over time to the point where I'm ready to drop it entirely. The predictions/autocompletes just seem completely batshit crazy compared to when I first started using it. Although if Microsoft are the new owners of the software then I'm definitely going to drop it anyway.
- aembleton 11y agoWhy would you leave just because Microsoft bought it? I really like their Android launcher - Arrow: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.launcher&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.... and so I'm confident that they can make a good go at it.
- martgnz 11y agoProbably because of this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11010345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11010345
- ionised 11y agoI've been really turned off by the way they have behaved lately, in particular the way they handled the push for people to adopt Windows 10. I upgraded myself (I'm a gamer, so basically just for DX12). 1) Autodownloading it to people's machines ignoring any user choice not to do so. 2) Auto-starting the the install/upgrade process without any input from the user. 3) Making user-hidden Windows 10 (and Windows 7/8 telemetry) updates available again, over and over. 4) Resetting privacy settings after Windows 10 updates 5) Refusing to clarify what is actually in Windows 10 updates, 6) And just flat out refusing to allow their users to turn off the telemetry and advertising in Windows Store apps altogether. Every once in a while Microsoft seems to start behaving themselves and improving on their old, shitty image. Then stuff like this happens, where 'honest mistakes' that just happen to be very much in their interests occur over and over again in a short space of time over the course of the initial adoption of their new software. I get that they stand to make a lot of money having as many people as possible on their new platform but when it comes at the cost of ignoring user choice, siphoning off their data and just not telling them what updates are doing to their systems then it's time to call bullshit. They're completely full of it and they haven't changed at all. I'm 100% convinced SwiftKey will become the next tool in their new user data-based business model, so I won't use it anymore. Just like I stopped using WhatsApp when Facebook acquired it.
- singularity2001 11y agoSad that after all those years Apple/iOS still doesn't have a keyboard with swypeing and voice input combined, or did I miss anything?
- k-mcgrady 11y ago...SwiftKey. It's available on iOS as are many other third party keyboards although admittedly the integration isn't great. As for voice input iOS has had that in the built-in keyboard for 3 or 4 years.
- jeffbax 11y agoYeah, but all iOS Keyboards have serious stability problems. I'm sure that it's Apple's API's fault first, and hope that MS's resources help iron things out, but its really frustrating. Integrating Cortana into the keyboard could be interesting though, would like to give it a spin if more convenient than it is today in comparison to Siri.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoYou're right the integration of third party keyboards is awful. I spend more time trying to get the right keyboard to show that actually using the thing.