7 ms·

This is HUGE in my opinion. Prior to this, in order to get near state-of-the-art speech recognition in your system/application you either had to have/hire exper

by blennon 11y ago

This is HUGE in my opinion. Prior to this, in order to get near state-of-the-art speech recognition in your system/application you either had to have/hire expertise to build your own or pay Nuance a significant amount of money to use theirs. Nuance has always been a "big bad" company in my mind. If I recall correctly, they've sued many of their smaller competitors out of existence and only do expensive enterprise deals. I'm glad their near monopoly is coming to an end. I think Google's API will usher in a lot of new innovative applications.

ericflo 11y ago
Interesting - I saw this as a defensive response to the rising number of developers using Amazon's Alexa APIs, rather than anything related to Nuance.
- dharma1 11y ago
  It's probably been on their roadmap for a while, before Alexa came out. Re: Alexa/echo - think there is an opportunity for someone to manufacture cheap USB array mics for far field capture. Still, having this paid and cloud based puts a limit to types of things where you'd use it. I will use it in my own apps for now but will swap to a OSS speech recognition library running locally as soon as one emerges that is good enough.
jamesdwilson 11y ago
Has Google sued many of their smaller competitors out of business?
- nl 11y ago
  No
- grahamburger 11y ago
  Isn't Google's strategy typically to just start offering the same services as their smaller competitors but for free and then let them starve? ... Kind of like what's probably happening here? Sounds like this is terrible news for Nuance, for example.
- TuringNYC 11y ago
  No, and they dont need to. They have too many other advantages -- low customer acquisition cost via already-present cloud customers, economies of scale, ease of hiring the best talent, natural integrations via their android platform...who needs nastiness when you have all these amazing benefits!
BorisEm 11y ago
Other "state-of-the-art" speech recognition solutions already exist. For example, Microsoft has been offering it through its Project Oxford service. https://www.projectoxford.ai/speech https://www.projectoxford.ai/speech
- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  Also, CMUSphinx and Julius: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/ http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/ http://julius.osdn.jp/en_index.php http://julius.osdn.jp/en_index.php It is amazingly easy to create speech recognition without going out to any API these days.
  - FranOntanaya 11y ago
    CMUSphinx is really easy to set up, and then being able to train it for one's specific domain probably beats state of the art with one-size-fits-all training.
  - ytjohn 11y ago
    I first learned about CMUSphinx from the [Jasper Project](https://jasperproject.github.io/ https://jasperproject.github.io/). While Jasper provided an image for the Pi, I decided to go ahead and make a scripted install of CMUSphinx. I spent something like 2 frustrating days attempting to get it installed by hand in a repeatable fashion before giving up. This was 2 years ago, so maybe it's simple now, but I didn't find it "amazingly easy" back then. I do have a number of projects where I could definitely use a local speech recognition library. I have used [Python SpeechRecognition](https://github.com/Uberi/speech_recognition/blob/master/examples/microphone_recognition.py https://github.com/Uberi/speech_recognition/blob/master/exam...) to essentially record and transcribe from a scanner. I wanted to take it further, but google at the time limited the number of requests per day. Today's announcement seems to indicate they will be expanding their free usage, but a local setup would be much better. I'd like to deploy this in a place that might not have reliable Internet.
    - simcop2387 11y ago
idiot99 11y ago
If it's anything like Googles other APIs, people will build applications on top of it, and then Google will decide to shut down the API with no notice. Fun to play with, but don't expect it to last...
- boulos 11y ago
  That's incorrect. This is a Google Cloud Platform service and when it reaches General Availability (GA) it will be subject to our Deprecation Policy. Just like Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, etc. requires us to give at least a 1 year heads up. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine.
  - oelmekki 11y ago
    It's nice there's a policy around that, but I can understand the fears of someone considering using this to start a product - or even worse, a business. Google has an history of shutting down useful products, why people should trust that one for long term integration?
    - boulos 11y ago
      Because we don't have a history of violating promises like this when done in writing? Seriously, I'd love to call us just "Cloud Platform" so you don't have to think "oh yeah, those guys cancelled reader on me" but if you look at the Cloud products we don't play games with this (partly because we hold ourselves to our binding Deprecation Policy, but mostly because we really care).
  - zelcon 11y ago
    Google Search API, Autocomplete, Finance, Voice all closed with tons of active users. I'm not blaming Google; they were acting in their best interest, but the consequence is less enthusiasm for building software that depends on their APIs. IMO a better option for Google, when considering to close an API, is to enforce payment and hike the price enough to justify maintaining it. If and only if enough users drop out with the higher price, then shut it down for good.
- 11y ago
F_J_H 11y ago
You're right - this could lead to a lot of new innovation as a bunch of developers who wouldn't have bothered before can now start hacking away to see what they can do. I've been thinking a lot lately about where the next major areas of technology-driven disruption might be in terms of employment impact, and things like this make me wonder how long it will be before call centers stacked wall to wall with customer service reps become a relic of the past...

by blennon 11y ago

ericflo 11y ago

Interesting - I saw this as a defensive response to the rising number of developers using Amazon's Alexa APIs, rather than anything related to Nuance.

dharma1 11y ago
It's probably been on their roadmap for a while, before Alexa came out. Re: Alexa/echo - think there is an opportunity for someone to manufacture cheap USB array mics for far field capture. Still, having this paid and cloud based puts a limit to types of things where you'd use it. I will use it in my own apps for now but will swap to a OSS speech recognition library running locally as soon as one emerges that is good enough.

jamesdwilson 11y ago

Has Google sued many of their smaller competitors out of business?

nl 11y ago
No
grahamburger 11y ago
Isn't Google's strategy typically to just start offering the same services as their smaller competitors but for free and then let them starve? ... Kind of like what's probably happening here? Sounds like this is terrible news for Nuance, for example.
TuringNYC 11y ago
No, and they dont need to. They have too many other advantages -- low customer acquisition cost via already-present cloud customers, economies of scale, ease of hiring the best talent, natural integrations via their android platform...who needs nastiness when you have all these amazing benefits!

BorisEm 11y ago

Other "state-of-the-art" speech recognition solutions already exist. For example, Microsoft has been offering it through its Project Oxford service. https://www.projectoxford.ai/speech https://www.projectoxford.ai/speech

hardwaresofton 11y ago
Also, CMUSphinx and Julius: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/ http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/ http://julius.osdn.jp/en_index.php http://julius.osdn.jp/en_index.php It is amazingly easy to create speech recognition without going out to any API these days.
- FranOntanaya 11y ago
  CMUSphinx is really easy to set up, and then being able to train it for one's specific domain probably beats state of the art with one-size-fits-all training.
- ytjohn 11y ago
  I first learned about CMUSphinx from the [Jasper Project](https://jasperproject.github.io/ https://jasperproject.github.io/). While Jasper provided an image for the Pi, I decided to go ahead and make a scripted install of CMUSphinx. I spent something like 2 frustrating days attempting to get it installed by hand in a repeatable fashion before giving up. This was 2 years ago, so maybe it's simple now, but I didn't find it "amazingly easy" back then. I do have a number of projects where I could definitely use a local speech recognition library. I have used [Python SpeechRecognition](https://github.com/Uberi/speech_recognition/blob/master/examples/microphone_recognition.py https://github.com/Uberi/speech_recognition/blob/master/exam...) to essentially record and transcribe from a scanner. I wanted to take it further, but google at the time limited the number of requests per day. Today's announcement seems to indicate they will be expanding their free usage, but a local setup would be much better. I'd like to deploy this in a place that might not have reliable Internet.
  - simcop2387 11y ago

idiot99 11y ago

If it's anything like Googles other APIs, people will build applications on top of it, and then Google will decide to shut down the API with no notice. Fun to play with, but don't expect it to last...

boulos 11y ago
That's incorrect. This is a Google Cloud Platform service and when it reaches General Availability (GA) it will be subject to our Deprecation Policy. Just like Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, etc. requires us to give at least a 1 year heads up. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine.
- oelmekki 11y ago
  It's nice there's a policy around that, but I can understand the fears of someone considering using this to start a product - or even worse, a business. Google has an history of shutting down useful products, why people should trust that one for long term integration?
  - boulos 11y ago
    Because we don't have a history of violating promises like this when done in writing? Seriously, I'd love to call us just "Cloud Platform" so you don't have to think "oh yeah, those guys cancelled reader on me" but if you look at the Cloud products we don't play games with this (partly because we hold ourselves to our binding Deprecation Policy, but mostly because we really care).
- zelcon 11y ago
  Google Search API, Autocomplete, Finance, Voice all closed with tons of active users. I'm not blaming Google; they were acting in their best interest, but the consequence is less enthusiasm for building software that depends on their APIs. IMO a better option for Google, when considering to close an API, is to enforce payment and hike the price enough to justify maintaining it. If and only if enough users drop out with the higher price, then shut it down for good.
11y ago

F_J_H 11y ago

You're right - this could lead to a lot of new innovation as a bunch of developers who wouldn't have bothered before can now start hacking away to see what they can do. I've been thinking a lot lately about where the next major areas of technology-driven disruption might be in terms of employment impact, and things like this make me wonder how long it will be before call centers stacked wall to wall with customer service reps become a relic of the past...