Google Conversation Actions For Google Home Gives Android Voice Access to 3rd Party Apps

If you're a little timid of talking to an electronic device, you better suck it up soon, because it looks like it's going to be such a big part of our future as the "new normal". Solutions like Google's Conversation Actions are going to make these interactions possible.

With Conversation Actions, smart algorithms are able to pick up on keywords to help give a reasoned response. An example of this can be seen below, where a user asks Google Home for dinner suggestions. The words "hot", "soup", "fast", "chicken", and "tomato" are plucked from the sentence, and without much of a delay, a tomato chicken soup recipe that can be made pretty quickly is suggested to the user.

The ultimate goal here is to allow people to talk to a Conversation Actions-equipped device in a natural way, even though most of what's spoken will simply be ignored. By being able to ask a natural question, though, it means that important keywords could be spoken, even inadvertently, that could drum up a more accurate response.

In another example, a user asks Google Home what the temperature is like at Mount Everest. This could also be used to find appropriate movies to see in the theater, get quick information about something specific, queuing up mood-suiting music, and so on. The possibilities truly are endless with a solution like this.

It's Google's hope that third-parties will like the idea of Conversation Actions enough to implement its API in their own apps (the video above is targeted squarely at those users). If that's done, then this could truly become not just a useful feature, but an addicting one.