Google Assistant Rolls Out Dutch and Russian Language Support
Google Assistant continued its global march of expanding localized language support over the past four days. On Thursday Google Assistant began rolling out support for the Dutch language and this weekend users reported being able to use Russian. The official Google Assistant support page doesn’t yet list either language, but a Google product blog page for the Netherlands announced Dutch language availability on July 26th and Android Police has documented the availability of Russian in the wild.
Google Assistant for the Netherlands
Dutch support was expected based on the announcement at the Google I/O developer conference that Google Home would come to the Netherlands in 2018. The company is following a typical pattern of releasing Google Assistant on Android and iOS smartphones first and then following some months later with the Google Home smart speakers. The company blog post also points out that Assistant is supported by a large number of brands (N.B. Dutch translation to English using Google translate feature):
“The Google Assistant not only speaks Dutch, but is Dutch. The functionality and personality are adapted to our country – the assistant sings Dutch songs, follows Dutch football and understands that the weather is very important to us…A large number of Dutch brands have built such an Action on Google. For example, you can ask PostNL when your package arrives, get some gift inspiration at Bol.com, ask Albert Heijn for recipes and check with Buienradar if it will rain soon. In addition to integration with international services such as Whatsapp, Spotify and Netflix, Dutch companies such as Centraal Beheer, Eneco, Essent, ING, Jumbo, KLM, KRO-NCRV, MediaMarket, NOS, NPO, Qmusic, Rabobank, Rituals, Transavia and Unilever also have a Action on Google created.”
Google Assistant for Russian Speakers
The Russian support doesn’t appear to have an official blog announcement which makes it unclear whether it is officially supported today. However, Android Police’s Ryne Hager was able get a Russian user to share an interaction in Russian with Assistant. Apparently this is a joke, but you Russian speakers can judge that better than me.
Image Credit: Android Police
Hager was also able to confirm that, “Android news site AndroidInsider discovered that a Russian language Play Store listing has also appeared for the Assistant app. Our own Artem was able to confirm the presence of a new Russian-specific listing for the app.” So, this is either in the early stages of rolling out or will be very soon. The real news here is that Google is aggressively rolling out localized language support because the company intends for Google Assistant to be a truly global service.
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