Bixby , Samsung's much-vaunted and criticized voice
assistant could be close to retirement. Rumors are growing that the Korean
company is ready to embrace the philosophy of Google and its Assistant, making
it the official voice service of its products. healthnutritionhints
A global agreement that would lead Samsung smartphones to
fully embrace the galaxy of services of the big G , while also sharing its
profits. It would be the end of a series of photocopy services that have long
cohabited within the same devices, leading to an ever greater uniformity of the
Android world, ready to become completely "googlecentric".
What is happening
To launch the news around the world was Reuters, which
unveiled part of a long-standing correspondence between Samsung and Google .
For years, from the parts of Mountain View they have tried to convince Koreans
to abandon their proprietary services, Bixby in the first place, to give
prevalence and greater visibility to those marked Google, starting from the
voice assistant up to online search and app store. The push and pull would now
be close to the final squeeze, the result of an agreement in which Google would
grant Samsung much higher revenues than previous requests. A move that would
also be necessary to prevent Samsung's eventual exit from the Android world,
which would be too painful a blow to bear after Huawei's demise..
On the other hand, Samsung would have realized that it had
traveled a very low-paying road for years, spending huge resources on projects
that never gave the hoped-for results. The pandemic has only made matter worse,
with Samsung ready to cut deadwood and eliminate anything that isn't working as
it should. For now the two companies have kept themselves completely vague,
talking about a close collaboration and nothing more, but there are many who
believe the agreement is now done , close to imminent formalization.
Bixby and the Samsung suite
Although within the Android ecosystem, Samsung has always
tried to maintain a certain independence from Google's hegemony. The
multinational's devices have always brought a fairly customized version of the
reference operating system, which has always been unique and perfectly
recognizable, as well as widely spread and known among users. In 2017 he had
tried the great leap of "semi-independence" with the launch of Bixby
, an advanced and far more performing voice assistant than the previously used
S-Voice . Furthermore, for years, there was also a proprietary store and a good
number of Galaxy-branded apps.
In the last three years Bixby had found a certain diffusion,
learned more and more languages and gradually became more and more evolved,
albeit always obscured by the much more important spread of Google Assistant .
What had come out was an independent ecosystem that was completely parallel to
Google's. Samsung users have always found themselves in their hands with
smartphones with photocopy apps, where the well-known Mountain View apps always
prevailed.
A project that never exploded
Strengthened by its hegemonic position on the market, with
skyrocketing sales all over the world and models capable of establishing itself
and making school among smartphone manufacturers, Samsung had also tried to
make the world of user services and apps its own. Not being able to afford a
proprietary OS, he tried to "own" Android with its intellectual
properties.
The goal was clear: if with Google services the revenues had
to be shared with those who had created those services, with the proprietary
apps it would be possible to have direct income that should not be shared with
anyone. But that project never fully took off , the pandemic dropped revenue
further and made these projects even less profitable, and Google's upside bid
did the rest.
Google's victory
Google would thus obtain the victory it has always hoped
for, finally finding the central place, which it had never had at all, within
the galaxy of products of the largest Android smartphone manufacturer on the
planet. A Mountain View had never fully appreciated Samsung's choices to
privilege its services to the detriment of the native ones of Android: the key
that gave direct access to Bixby was for a long time a reason to contend
between the two companies and over the several years have been the contacts
between the two realities to find a balance.
On the one hand the South Koreans wanted to make the Android
world at least a minimum profit, on the other the Americans were always looking
for an Android that was as uniform as possible, whatever the brand of the
smartphone it was supposed to run on. Android would thus become even more
recognizable and Google services would be seen not only as the best, but also
the only ones available within the system, without any clones.
A painless goodbye
What will all of this mean for the end user? First of all,
we must remember that the agreement between Google and Samsung has not yet been
reached. The changes will certainly be minor for users who have long been
accustomed to giving priority to Google services and apps. Samsung services
have always been relegated to the background of most people's preferences. We
are sure, unfortunately for Samsung, that no one will miss the Galaxy Store too
much and even a voice assistant that is still valid as Bixby risks disappearing
from the radar without making too much noise, overshadowed by the hegemony of
Siri before and by the predominance of Google Assistant and Alexa from Amazon,
who have imposed their philosophy with their proprietary devices.
We cannot know if the project will be totally abandoned, but
it is unlikely that Samsung will continue to invest resources in a product
relegated to the margins, a service that requires huge amounts of resources to
be developed, carried out and kept up with the times and competitors.
Different smartphones?
On a practical level, Samsung smartphones should not come
out too distorted, thanks to a philosophy and an identity that would still
remain recognizable in the eyes of the end user. For its part, the company
could also divert the resources earned on production and other projects,
increasing other prestigious sectors and leaving behind those who have never
had the explosion they deserved.
If the agreement materializes, it is certainly a step back
in the future of Samsung, which aimed at a series of proprietary services along
the lines of those developed by Apple and other competitors for some time.
Google, on the other hand, will achieve a good part of its main objective, that
of making sure thatAndroid is recognized only as the system of Google and its
services , not exclusive to a single reality but the only one available as an
alternative to iOS.
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