That product reminded me of Facebook’s M, a Messenger-based assistant that wasn’t able to scale. I guess Fb didn’t have two years ago the tech that Google has n

That product reminded me of Facebook’s M, a Messenger-based assistant that wasn’t able to scale. I guess Fb didn’t have two years ago the tech that Google has now. M’s key uses cases are probably going to prove essential here: aside from the usual flowers-for-my-wife-on-our-anniversary and other difficult-flights-to-book, basically busy executive stuffs, the massive potential was to deal with painful cancellation processes for your ISP, bank, gym, etc. If Google (or a developper using this API) can handle the intentionally convoluted interactions that those imply, this could be very powerful and make using Assistant the best way to handle some painful cases. Imagine applying for a loan, refinancing, switching to a better phone contract whenever there is a good offer: this technology could advise people to move between services with significant usability moats much faster, and greatly improve competition and our experience.