While this specific feature, at least for now, is Pixel exclusive, Google Translate itself still is completely free, and usable even without an account by anyone anywhere. It's hard to see the financial incentive to provide unlimited translations to anyone in the world for free.
These giant tech companies definitely a lot of shady and ambiguous stuff, but I still think we should commend them when they put resources in these other techs that aren't necessarily money makers, but provide a net plus for humanity. It's clear that these projects are being funded by money made in other parts of Google, such as their ad business.
It's similar to how BuzzFeed is mostly a trashy website, but once in a while they will come up with well researched thorough articles. It's clear that their shitty front page is a fund for them to achieve greater things.
Google Translate is a great product, but not monetizing it directly doesn't mean they do it out of the goodness of their heart. It is in their best interest to have access to as much information as possible no matter the language, and in that context a powerful translator is a priority, there is no way around it, and that is a massive financial incentive. That it also provides a great experience to keep its users loyal to their ecosystem is also a great financial incentive.
Also, don't underestimate taking away revenue sources from your competitors. If your competitor competes with you at A, but makes money at B, then taking away that B revenue stream affects their ability to compete with you at A as well.
There's Yandex which operates Russia's largest search engine (65% market share) which also runs Yandex Translate [0]. There's also Microsoft Translator [1], and Microsoft owns Bing, though MS Translator is a little different than Google Translate / Yandex Translate.
I find the free Google Translate, on iOS, to be one of my absolute favorite tools when traveling. The camera OCR translate feature is almost like magic.
I used it on my Pixel in a recent trip to Japan and it was a life saver. From translating signs and bus schedules, to communicating with a waiter that didn't speak English about an issue with my credit card.
Google translate is... iffy. Here's an example from this morning, where I asked a colleague about how the mooncakes were at last night's mid-Autumn festival:
were the mooncakes good last night? -> google translate -> 月饼好吗昨晚好吗？
月饼好吗昨晚好吗？ -> google translate -> Would you like me last night?
I ended up forming my own question, which was slightly wrong - my colleague asked 你是要说好吃吗? ("did you mean to say 'tasty'?") which I threw into el goog for a laugh, and got in return: "Are you going to be delicious?"
So either google translate is a bit iffy (still amazing, but iffy) or mooncakes are some sort of aphrodisiac and I'm not understanding that :)
> It's hard to see the financial incentive to provide unlimited translations to anyone in the world for free.
More communication = more trade, more market penetration = more money floating around. It's not a direct incentive, but it's there.
I worked on this feature and just want to clarify that it isn't Pixel exclusive; it works on any Android phone running M or newer. It is exclusive to the Pixel Buds, though.
Sorry, my information was out of date since I switched projects a while ago. Supporting all M+ phones was the original plan, but after observing some severe bluetooth audio bugs on certain phones, the team decided to support Pixel only for now to derisk the launch.
Then why does this footnote exist on the google store?
See the last sentence:
¹The Google Assistant on Google Pixel Buds is only available on Android and requires an Assistant-enabled Android device and data connection. Data rates may apply. For available Assistant languages and minimum requirements go to g.co/pixelbuds/help. Requires a Google Account for full access to features. Google Translate on Google Pixel Buds is only available on Pixel.
We did explore using standard protocols in order to support third party headsets. The most natural solution would be to listen for AT+BVRA (voice recognition command), which most headsets generate after some button is held down for a couple seconds. It didn't fit with our desired UX, though. We wanted a hold-while-talking UX, rather than hold for a couple seconds, wait for a beep, then release and start talking.
We thought about listening for AVRCP key events to detect when a certain button was pressed and released -- probably play/pause, which seems to be the most prominent button on most headsets. It would have been hacky, though, and we ran into several problems. For one thing, a lot of headsets power off if the play/pause button is held down for several seconds.
We also had concerns about audio quality with third party headsets, especially those which didn't support modern versions of SCO (which introduced new codecs with 16khz support and other improvements), or with poor antennas leading to high packet loss (SCO is a lossy protocol, so we still get some speech and attempt to translate it, but accuracy suffers). We were concerned that all accuracy problems would make Google Translate look bad, even if the headset was to blame.
The problem that the Pixel Buds integration aims to solve is that it gets cumbersome for two people to hand a phone back and forth. With the new UX, one person can use the phone while the other uses Pixel Buds for the duration of the conversation.
I think what he was saying is just move the "button" on the headphones to a button on the phone, because they are already holding it. Then the headphones can just be in a normal "audio call" mode, and the phone button triggers the translation engine to stream data...
These giant tech companies definitely a lot of shady and ambiguous stuff, but I still think we should commend them when they put resources in these other techs that aren't necessarily money makers, but provide a net plus for humanity. It's clear that these projects are being funded by money made in other parts of Google, such as their ad business.
It's similar to how BuzzFeed is mostly a trashy website, but once in a while they will come up with well researched thorough articles. It's clear that their shitty front page is a fund for them to achieve greater things.