This sounds like a nightmare for businesses. This time commitment asymmetry will be the issue with these systems. Like email spam, it becomes much easier to waste others people's time when you automate time wasting. If people use it to flake a lot, I could see businesses just not responding to the assistant.
They pointed out during the presentation that the system could call once to a business and get the hours, then allow hundreds or thousands of users to see that without bothering the business again. Assuming it works, it could save a significant amount of time for some places.
>If people use it to flake a lot, I could see businesses just not responding to the assistant.
Then it sounds like incentives are aligned here. Google needs to not allow users to abuse this ability so that businesses will trust and not block them.
If they allow something like the parent commenter pointed out, they would sour relationships with businesses who would promptly seek out ways to block or decline calls from this system.
>Then it sounds like incentives are aligned here. Google needs to not allow users to abuse this ability so that businesses will trust and not block them.
But then they can't take bookings through google assistant, which is going to lose non-trvial amounts of business.
Seems far more likely that they'd pay Google to automatically handle duplex calls for them.
The worse this technology turns out for businesses, the more pressure there is to pay google money.
If it's costing more money than it's bringing in, then it's no longer worth it. If it's bringing in more money than it costs, then it's a good thing for the business.
If a business needs to hire a dedicated phone person because they are getting so many appointments filled, they aren't going to be upset. But if they get so many flakers that won't show up, they are losing money as customers that will show up are getting pushed out, so they will block Duplex. There are also other ways to solve this problem, require a phone number and name and block or charge people for missed appointments if they try to reschedule. Require some kind of down-payment over the phone when making the appointment. There are tons of solutions to this problem.
At no point is "Pay google to handle the calls" an option. This is really only for places that don't have an online appointment system (that possibly integrates into google), so the solution to the duplex calls would be to invest in one. Since "pay google to handle duplex" would look a lot like an API to a scheduling system anyway, and an independent one (with integrations into Google's systems) would reach more customers.
Just one more way that big business is taking over our lives. The world is becoming incredibly scary.
Or being forced to use for Google's small business version of Duplex to handle the increased call load (for a small fee of course).
If you could read 15 spam E-Mails to have a >50% chance of a $100 dinner reservation you'd hire someone to read your spam.
This conversation reminds me of "Lenny", a simple bot someone created to talk pointlessly in circles with telemarketers for hours until they hang up in frustration.
By the same token, telemarketing companies could employ Duplex to call people. I guess if a Duplex telemarketer reached a Duplex telemarketer-baiter, the conversation could stretch on for a really long time and might make for amusing fodder on Youtube.
It's a strange new world!
Today, it is much easier to just put in your preferred time and rating into Open Table and see what's available.
Besides the business-side run-your-business-like-a-callcenter application, this is the "caller-side" application that's going to make money for Google. The others (virtual personal assistant) have been historically hard to get mass consumers to pay for.
It's straight out of the StreetView playbook... industrialize the scale of data collection, give the results out for free, then monetize the eyeballs (eg more accurate yelp).
Then again, Google ran that free 411 service for a few years that turns out was just a massive natural voice recording data corpus miner...
I'm not sure if this is common practice at least in Europe. I'm sure it's unheard-of in Turkey (and I've been lucky enough to make reservations for some high end and/or very popular restaurants).
May I ask in which countries you've experienced this in? I'm genuinely curious.
Funny enough they also use OpenTable, so no need for this Google stuff — just use the API or book through the site. You can also call them if for some reason that is preferable.
It's the user rating from Google Maps users. They are represented as stars and you can filter based on them.
* In the example where Google asked about holiday hours -- they can now automate gathering information about businesses in bulk without having to rely on any APIs or user supplied info. Interesting thought experiment is Google validating their reviews/business listings by actually calling businesses and speaking to a real human.
* This is going to be fantastic for accessibility. Maybe I struggle to speak, and I want a reservation. I can have the machine do the irritating work, and focus on just having a nice meal or getting a service (like a haircut).
* Google can scale out your requests, one to N. For example, 'Make me a reservation at a 4 star restaurant next Friday.' Google can immediately initiate calls against 15 restaurants and let you pick from the successes, then automatically cancel the reservations for the places you did not choose.