11 ms·

Don't get me wrong I like the tech but I don't get the sentiment. It is just a gimmick or a bridge technology. In the end our phones should be able to talk to t

by cecja 8y ago

Don't get me wrong I like the tech but I don't get the sentiment. It is just a gimmick or a bridge technology. In the end our phones should be able to talk to the booking system and make the reservation without human interaction. I think the resources could be better allocated, I guess it's just a show and tell kinda project for google but the novelty wears of really fast after the first wrong reservation.

lallysingh 8y ago
No man. Nobody cares about the booking of reservations. This is about AIs having useful conversations with people. Start with a very limited context and goal, and grow out from there.
Klathmon 8y ago
Everything in life is a "stopgap". In an ideal world we wouldn't need to make reservations at all, our phones would just sense that we were heading toward a restaurant and would work directly with people there to ensure we have a table and our food is ready and paid for by the time we get there. But we don't live in an ideal world, and making a "perfect" system that nobody uses is useless. This is a solution that real people can take advantage of right now for many places that don't have the budget or time to integrate with every service out there. It's an real solution to a real problem, and I don't think calling it "show and tell" is fair just because you can think of a "technically better" solution in 5 minutes that you'll never be able to roll out to 90%+ of stores and services out there. "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good"
- scarface74 8y ago
  No the good would be Google hosting a free booking software as a service system and an app or even Google Assistant to interact with the system. I'm sure companies would jump at the opportunity. Google gets more information about people's habits and it the success rate would be a lot higher. "Don't let overly complicated be the enemy of the simple"....
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    Which they can still do! And are in a way (they also showed integrations with assistant and APIs at the same time as showing Duplex). But that assumes that businesses have the time to integrate, that they care to integrate, and that they can repeat the process for every proprietary API and service out there. That requires a fulltime developer or another service that does the integration for them. Which again isn't a problem for a lot of businesses, they might be more than happy to do that, but we won't ever hit 100% coverage with those services, especially not across all the "smart assistants" out there. This allows users to work with almost 100% of businesses right now, and businesses can further integrate without duplex if needed/wanted and the user will not have to care what system the business uses, or how it integrates.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      But that assumes that businesses have the time to integrate, that they care to integrate, and that they can repeat the process for every proprietary API and service out there. Google is the 800 pound gorilla. Companies would integrate with them if they don't want to be left out. This allows users to work with almost 100% of businesses right now, You're assuming that it will be good enough and that the businesses won't hang up on it like people do with every other spam automated system.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    And this runs head long into competitive issues. Google says they'll integrate the Google Assistant with OpenTable to let you book tables, but what's the chance OpenTable would nix that integration if Google was trying to make a free competitor? Google doesn't want to be in the restaurant booking system business, and this let's them offer a service in their assistant that no one else can.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Companies already go out of their way to place nice with Google (AMP pages). OpenTable really wouldn't have a choice. By being the default, Google has a competitive advantage. Google doesn't want to be in the restaurant booking system business Google wants to be in every business where they can gather data to better target advertising.
51Cards 8y ago
Your comment misses the critical point though... this hits all the places that have no electronic booking systems. To those here that concept probably seems absurd because we're technically oriented. My barber, doctor, mechanic and favorite BBQ joint however still take phone calls to make appointments and you can talk to them about electronic scheduling till you're blue in the face, they have no desire to change. The goal of this technology is to bridge the gap... start thinking machine to human interaction where machine to machine isn't available. Not to mention the language barriers. Think of a person still struggling with a language needing to make an appointment in that language. I can see an interface on this where you would select the location and time and have Assistant call them in the appropriate language to handle the exchange for you. No longer is that local pasta place out of my reach when I'm in Italy but can't speak Italian. This opens up a huge realm of possibilities.
- scarface74 8y ago
  this hits all the places that have no electronic booking systems. To those here that concept probably seems absurd because we're technically oriented. My barber, doctor, mechanic and favorite BBQ joint however still take phone calls to make appointments and you can talk to them about electronic scheduling till you're blue in the face, they have no desire to change. Sure they will change, my barber uses stripe, my doctor does everything else on computer - he's over 60 and three weeks away from retirement, my mechanic has to be technical to operate on modern cars and uses computers for estimates, sending pictures to insurance agents, etc.
  - 51Cards 8y ago
    At what point in our industry have we ever said "Let's stop innovating and making things easier, we've come far enough, now the people have to adapt to us." Natural language processing and conversation is the next step right now... to me this is such a logical progression I'll be shocked if it's not being planned by many teams.
    - scarface74 8y ago
ttul 8y ago
Booking appointments is one of those areas that suffers terribly from a lack of network effects. Since it is so easy to create a new booking system, there are millions of different ones - your dentist probably uses a way different system from your doctor, for instance, never mind another dentist. Because it’s easy to create a booking system, making a translation layer between systems is hard. There is no natural incentive for these booking systems to standardize, because each has its constituent users, and none of them are complaining. So, for now, and probably for a long time to come, booking will be done by humans.
- ttul 8y ago
  ... clarification: by humans I mean the receptionists, not the Google Duplex.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Booking appointments is one of those areas that suffers terribly from a lack of network effects. Since it is so easy to create a new booking system, there are millions of different ones - your dentist probably uses a way different system from your doctor, for instance, never mind another dentist. Now imagine what would happen if Google swooped in and gave one away for free and said it would easily integrate with Android and iOS devices. Then imagine them giving away cheap tablets to run it on....
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    >Now imagine what would happen if Google swooped in and gave one away for free and said it would easily integrate with Android and iOS devices. Very little. The overwhelming majority of businesses won't switch their booking system unless they have a truly compelling reason. A large proportion of small businesses still use pen-and-paper to manage their bookings and have no intention of changing. There is still a non-trivial market for dot-matrix printers and NCR paper. Many national retail chains use terminal emulators for their Point of Sale systems. For perfectly understandable reasons, businesses tend to be very conservative about their technology choices. Their current solution might not be perfect, but they know that it works, for a value of "works" that is compatible with their business remaining profitable. They know from experience that new technologies are often more trouble than they're worth.
jdietrich 8y ago
The world is full of stop-gap technologies, because switching is hard and expensive. I have a PNG of my signature and a PDF-to-fax service, because I sometimes need to interface with legacy systems. I still have a checkbook, which I use once or twice a year. I have a full set of metric and SAE wrenches. Hell, I've still got some RS-232 cables. Duplex is an adapter, a shim, an abstraction layer. It's not perfect, but it solves a problem.
reaperducer 8y ago
I don't fully disagree, but you have to realize that there are a great number of people and places that are not hooked up to the internet, due to geography, politics, history, or other reasons. Some of the best restaurants, hotels, and other experiences in the world are not reachable via an online reservation system. The place I stayed last weekend can only be reserved by phone. Not because the owners luddites, but to keep out the bargain hunting riff-raff. There was a piece on CBS News a few weeks ago about a restaurant in Maine that's so popular you can only make a reservation by mail. Sure hotels.com and opentable.com may nail the 80% of what's popular to the kinds of people who go to those sorts of places. But this world is so much bigger and more interesting than the internet or even Google can imagine. For me the killed Duplex app will be when it's able to make a reservation for me in a language I don't speak. But even though its lost the "beta" badge, Google Translate still isn't ready for primetime.[0] [0] I say this based on the feedback from the professional translators I work with daily. I put Google Translate text in my work as placeholders, and they have to then re-translate the projects correctly before they can be published.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Would raising the prices be enough to weed out the barfain hunting riff raff? That phone only model just sounds like an excise or a bias against young people who tend to use computers more
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Would raising the prices be enough to weed out the barfain hunting riff raff? With airline miles, hotels.com free night promotions, etc... probably not. People who want something for nothing will try anything.
csomar 8y ago
I don't think this is about automated bookings. This is about Google advancing AI.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
Google Duplex is not really about restaurant reservations. AlphaGo is not really about winning at the game of Go. They're both about something else. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
darkerside 8y ago
With this attitude, messy and outdated protocols like HTTP and TCP/IP would be shelved in favor of clean and efficient theoretical protocols that transcend the foolish bonds of our existing infrastructure. i.e. No Internet
megy 8y ago
This is huge step. No longer does a computer need an API to communicate with someone.

by cecja 8y ago

lallysingh 8y ago

No man. Nobody cares about the booking of reservations. This is about AIs having useful conversations with people. Start with a very limited context and goal, and grow out from there.

Klathmon 8y ago

Everything in life is a "stopgap". In an ideal world we wouldn't need to make reservations at all, our phones would just sense that we were heading toward a restaurant and would work directly with people there to ensure we have a table and our food is ready and paid for by the time we get there. But we don't live in an ideal world, and making a "perfect" system that nobody uses is useless. This is a solution that real people can take advantage of right now for many places that don't have the budget or time to integrate with every service out there. It's an real solution to a real problem, and I don't think calling it "show and tell" is fair just because you can think of a "technically better" solution in 5 minutes that you'll never be able to roll out to 90%+ of stores and services out there. "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good"

scarface74 8y ago
No the good would be Google hosting a free booking software as a service system and an app or even Google Assistant to interact with the system. I'm sure companies would jump at the opportunity. Google gets more information about people's habits and it the success rate would be a lot higher. "Don't let overly complicated be the enemy of the simple"....
- Klathmon 8y ago
  Which they can still do! And are in a way (they also showed integrations with assistant and APIs at the same time as showing Duplex). But that assumes that businesses have the time to integrate, that they care to integrate, and that they can repeat the process for every proprietary API and service out there. That requires a fulltime developer or another service that does the integration for them. Which again isn't a problem for a lot of businesses, they might be more than happy to do that, but we won't ever hit 100% coverage with those services, especially not across all the "smart assistants" out there. This allows users to work with almost 100% of businesses right now, and businesses can further integrate without duplex if needed/wanted and the user will not have to care what system the business uses, or how it integrates.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    But that assumes that businesses have the time to integrate, that they care to integrate, and that they can repeat the process for every proprietary API and service out there. Google is the 800 pound gorilla. Companies would integrate with them if they don't want to be left out. This allows users to work with almost 100% of businesses right now, You're assuming that it will be good enough and that the businesses won't hang up on it like people do with every other spam automated system.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  And this runs head long into competitive issues. Google says they'll integrate the Google Assistant with OpenTable to let you book tables, but what's the chance OpenTable would nix that integration if Google was trying to make a free competitor? Google doesn't want to be in the restaurant booking system business, and this let's them offer a service in their assistant that no one else can.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Companies already go out of their way to place nice with Google (AMP pages). OpenTable really wouldn't have a choice. By being the default, Google has a competitive advantage. Google doesn't want to be in the restaurant booking system business Google wants to be in every business where they can gather data to better target advertising.

51Cards 8y ago

Your comment misses the critical point though... this hits all the places that have no electronic booking systems. To those here that concept probably seems absurd because we're technically oriented. My barber, doctor, mechanic and favorite BBQ joint however still take phone calls to make appointments and you can talk to them about electronic scheduling till you're blue in the face, they have no desire to change. The goal of this technology is to bridge the gap... start thinking machine to human interaction where machine to machine isn't available. Not to mention the language barriers. Think of a person still struggling with a language needing to make an appointment in that language. I can see an interface on this where you would select the location and time and have Assistant call them in the appropriate language to handle the exchange for you. No longer is that local pasta place out of my reach when I'm in Italy but can't speak Italian. This opens up a huge realm of possibilities.

scarface74 8y ago
this hits all the places that have no electronic booking systems. To those here that concept probably seems absurd because we're technically oriented. My barber, doctor, mechanic and favorite BBQ joint however still take phone calls to make appointments and you can talk to them about electronic scheduling till you're blue in the face, they have no desire to change. Sure they will change, my barber uses stripe, my doctor does everything else on computer - he's over 60 and three weeks away from retirement, my mechanic has to be technical to operate on modern cars and uses computers for estimates, sending pictures to insurance agents, etc.
- 51Cards 8y ago
  At what point in our industry have we ever said "Let's stop innovating and making things easier, we've come far enough, now the people have to adapt to us." Natural language processing and conversation is the next step right now... to me this is such a logical progression I'll be shocked if it's not being planned by many teams.
  - scarface74 8y ago

ttul 8y ago

Booking appointments is one of those areas that suffers terribly from a lack of network effects. Since it is so easy to create a new booking system, there are millions of different ones - your dentist probably uses a way different system from your doctor, for instance, never mind another dentist. Because it’s easy to create a booking system, making a translation layer between systems is hard. There is no natural incentive for these booking systems to standardize, because each has its constituent users, and none of them are complaining. So, for now, and probably for a long time to come, booking will be done by humans.

ttul 8y ago
... clarification: by humans I mean the receptionists, not the Google Duplex.
scarface74 8y ago
Booking appointments is one of those areas that suffers terribly from a lack of network effects. Since it is so easy to create a new booking system, there are millions of different ones - your dentist probably uses a way different system from your doctor, for instance, never mind another dentist. Now imagine what would happen if Google swooped in and gave one away for free and said it would easily integrate with Android and iOS devices. Then imagine them giving away cheap tablets to run it on....
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >Now imagine what would happen if Google swooped in and gave one away for free and said it would easily integrate with Android and iOS devices. Very little. The overwhelming majority of businesses won't switch their booking system unless they have a truly compelling reason. A large proportion of small businesses still use pen-and-paper to manage their bookings and have no intention of changing. There is still a non-trivial market for dot-matrix printers and NCR paper. Many national retail chains use terminal emulators for their Point of Sale systems. For perfectly understandable reasons, businesses tend to be very conservative about their technology choices. Their current solution might not be perfect, but they know that it works, for a value of "works" that is compatible with their business remaining profitable. They know from experience that new technologies are often more trouble than they're worth.

jdietrich 8y ago

The world is full of stop-gap technologies, because switching is hard and expensive. I have a PNG of my signature and a PDF-to-fax service, because I sometimes need to interface with legacy systems. I still have a checkbook, which I use once or twice a year. I have a full set of metric and SAE wrenches. Hell, I've still got some RS-232 cables. Duplex is an adapter, a shim, an abstraction layer. It's not perfect, but it solves a problem.

reaperducer 8y ago

I don't fully disagree, but you have to realize that there are a great number of people and places that are not hooked up to the internet, due to geography, politics, history, or other reasons. Some of the best restaurants, hotels, and other experiences in the world are not reachable via an online reservation system. The place I stayed last weekend can only be reserved by phone. Not because the owners luddites, but to keep out the bargain hunting riff-raff. There was a piece on CBS News a few weeks ago about a restaurant in Maine that's so popular you can only make a reservation by mail. Sure hotels.com and opentable.com may nail the 80% of what's popular to the kinds of people who go to those sorts of places. But this world is so much bigger and more interesting than the internet or even Google can imagine. For me the killed Duplex app will be when it's able to make a reservation for me in a language I don't speak. But even though its lost the "beta" badge, Google Translate still isn't ready for primetime.[0] [0] I say this based on the feedback from the professional translators I work with daily. I put Google Translate text in my work as placeholders, and they have to then re-translate the projects correctly before they can be published.

fjsolwmv 8y ago
Would raising the prices be enough to weed out the barfain hunting riff raff? That phone only model just sounds like an excise or a bias against young people who tend to use computers more
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Would raising the prices be enough to weed out the barfain hunting riff raff? With airline miles, hotels.com free night promotions, etc... probably not. People who want something for nothing will try anything.

csomar 8y ago

I don't think this is about automated bookings. This is about Google advancing AI.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago

Google Duplex is not really about restaurant reservations. AlphaGo is not really about winning at the game of Go. They're both about something else. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

darkerside 8y ago

With this attitude, messy and outdated protocols like HTTP and TCP/IP would be shelved in favor of clean and efficient theoretical protocols that transcend the foolish bonds of our existing infrastructure. i.e. No Internet

megy 8y ago

This is huge step. No longer does a computer need an API to communicate with someone.