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My Google phone can instantly translate almost any foreign language, embedded in an image, without an internet connection. Pretty sure that was not a thing 8 ye
by pphysch 4y ago
My Google phone can instantly translate almost any foreign language, embedded in an image, without an internet connection. Pretty sure that was not a thing 8 years ago.
If/when Google embeds an (local and/or lightweight) Bard model into every Pixel phone, that will be a game-changer.
- gchokov 4y agoThat was a feature of google translate many years ago. Absolutely nothing new.
- ROTMetro 4y agoAnd was came from a purchase of Word Lens not something in house if I remember right.
- pleadthefifth 4y agoWhile cool, that's a feature, not a product. Sundar has not led the company on any new products that have succeeded. The chat apps failed, Meet/Hangouts/whatever lost to Zoom, Stadia got cancelled, etc. All their current cash cows made their names before him. At least he didn't oversee the introduction of Google Plus, though.
- thehappypm 4y agoHe’s leading Google Cloud to strong growth, which is more important than something niche but innovative like Stadia.
- htrp 4y agoTechnically they poached Thomas Kurian from Oracle for that.....
- pleadthefifth 4y agoThat's fine, Kurian is under Sundar too. But GCP isn't winning.
- rippercushions 4y agoThat's WordLens, which Google acquired in 2014, 9 years ago. https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/16/google-has-acquired-quest-visual-the-maker-of-camera-based-translation-app-word-lens/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/16/google-has-acquired-quest-...
- pphysch 4y agoDo you have a source that WordLens worked without an internet connection?
- int_19h 4y agoIf it didn't, surely that wasn't a tech limitation? Google Translator itself has had offline translation capabilities for many years now, and Bing had that feature even longer. Offline OCR has been around even longer.
- rippercushions 4y agoYes, offline capability was there since day one. The Android version of Word Lens actually launched last month [June 2012]. All of the features that made the iOS app interesting are available in the Android version, including completely offline translations. https://lifehacker.com/word-lens-for-android-brings-offline-visual-language-t-5924330 https://lifehacker.com/word-lens-for-android-brings-offline-...