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The Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max have completed Spanish 101
Google is improving the smart screens' Spanish support
In 2019, Google brought the Nest Hub to a dozen new countries, just as it received a fresh rebranding. Spain was among the twelve regions chosen for official support, but Spanish-language options have been lacking in the US ever since. After two years, Google is finally bringing broader support for how the device functions with one of the most popular spoken languages in the world.
Chromecast with Google TV brings its recommended shows and movies to Spanish-speaking users
OK Google, donde esta la biblioteca?
Google really knocked it out of the park on its most recent Chromecast. Adding an entire interface with remote support helped to push the gadget to the next level in the ever-competitive streaming scene. Of course, the addition of a UI also requires making the experience as accessible as possible. With Google's newest update to its streaming device, more streaming recommendations are now available in Spanish.
Google Meet brings live captions to four new languages on mobile
It's only available in Europe and Asia Pacific for now
The sudden surge in working from home has led Google to heavily invest in its video chat tools, including Google Meet (formerly Hangouts Meet). Last month it gained the ability to accept multiple join requests at once, and now Meet's live caption feature will support more languages.
New Google Assistant adds 4 languages, but don't expect the same abilities as English
French, German, Italian, and Spanish are the "lucky" winners
In the Pixel 4a's announcement post, Google said that the new Assistant, which had been only available in English and Japanese so far, would "soon" support four new languages. Nearly two months later, that promise is materializing. You can now use the faster and cleaner Assistant in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Spanish grammar suggestions now available in Google Docs for G Suite teams
Autocomplete and Smart Compose also coming
If you're a Google Docs user in a G Suite team, you're probably still coming to grips with some new assistive writing features like grammar tips, autocorrect, and Smart Compose. Soon, those features will be adapted for Spanish drafters as well. It all starts with neural network-powered grammatical suggestions this week.
It's hard to believe that Gmail is fifteen years old today. In human years, that would equate to lots of sneaking around, unapproved driving, under-age drinking, and daily existential crisis about everything — i.e. normal teenage drama. But in Gmail years, this means we're getting some demure features. Namely, the email service finally lets us schedule emails.
We rarely speak of Assistant on Android TV because changes in the platform are highly dependent on TV and set-top box manufacturers, infrequent updates, and sometimes server-side pushes from Google. But language support is something we keep an eye on, as it allows users who don't speak English to use the Assistant on their TVs.
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- According to an update made to the Language and Locale Support section of the Actions on Google documentation site, these new higher-quality WaveNet voices will start to roll out on March 4th. The new voices provide users of the Actions on Google platform with voices that meet or exceed a 3.6 mean opinion score (i.e., which provide better perceived quality than the previous TTS voices used).
As with most of Google's products, Assistant is an incredibly powerful tool in the United States, but its functionality is limited in other countries. This is understandable, since there are dozens of other major languages worldwide with countless dialects, and speech recognition for each variation can take a while to develop. At Mobile World Congress, Google announced a massive expansion for Assistant's language support.
Google's Messages app, then called Android Messages, first received Smart Reply functionality in late 2017. A year and a half later, Messages v4.0 is adding support for Smart Reply in Spanish, as well as the ability to rename group conversations. For the impatient among you, we have the APK ready for download.
Google has just silently rolled out Spanish language support for its Assistant on Android TV, spotted via a new localization page for the product category. There are a few irregularities right now, though, such as inconsistent behavior depending on precisely which setting you flip it to, and Google's support page for the Assistant on Android TV hasn't been updated to mention the new support just yet.
Google Assistant routines can save you a lot of time by executing multiple commands in succession after you say a simple sentence. They started off as "My Day," which brought a simple morning routine, but then multiple routines were enabled, as were custom routines, and finally scheduled routines. But until recently, they were only officially available if you set your Assistant to use English (US). Now, they're supported in many more language/country combinations.
Your Google Assistant is bilingual starting today — at least, for any pair of six specific languages
Google's Assistant has been making great strides in both functionality and speech recognition since its original release in the far off year of 2016. In fact, Google says that it has improved so much that, starting today, it can recognize two different languages interchangeably. Your Google Home is now bilingual, something no other digital assistant can do — at least, since Google's other assistant, Google Now. But there is a caveat: it supports only two languages among a list of six.
Amazon has announced that the Echo and other Alexa speakers from Bose and Sonos are coming to Spain and Italy later this year. In preparation for that, it is now expanding the Alexa Skills Kit and Voice Service to these two countries.
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- Google has announced this officially.
¡Hola! If you speak Spanish and prefer to talk to your virtual assistants in that language, then I have good news for you. Google Home's settings have been updated now so you can choose Español as your default language for your smart speakers.
Back at Google I/O, we missed a little interesting nugget of information. It was quietly announced that Google Home and Home Mini will be launching in seven new countries during 2018: Denmark, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. And it's Spain we're focusing on today as it seems like the launch is imminent in the country: both the Google Home and Home Mini were briefly posted on El Corte Inglés's website then removed, plus the site is also showing Google Wifi router 1-pack and 3-pack (those pages haven't been taken down yet).
Google Lens' availability has been expanding ever since its first announcement. Although it started as an exclusive for Pixel owners in Google Photos, it quickly showed up in Assistant too, then rolled to non-Pixel devices in Photos, and eventually made it to those devices in Assistant too. However, through it all, Lens in Assistant and Photos has been limited to one language: English. Até que enfim it's now showing up for users in five other languages: French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Google Assistant's language support is, to put it mildly, dumbfounding. The list of languages that you can talk to Assistant in varies between phones, tablets, smartwatches, speakers, Google Home, Allo, TVs, Autos, and every other medium you can find it on. But sooner or later, they start catching up to each other, and now two new languages are making their way to Assistant on Wear OS: Spanish and Hindi.
Over the past couple of months, more and more phones have begun receiving Android 8.0 Oreo. Despite being about six months old now, Oreo is still rolling out to several devices, slowly contributing to its 1% marketshare. Just recently, Samsung started (and then stopped) the official rollout of Oreo to the Galaxy S8 and S8+, and now ZTE is joining the club by announcing its Axon 7 A2017U Oreo Preview Program.
At I/O 2017, Google said that multiple languages, including Italian and Spanish, would be arriving on Assistant by the end of the year. November has only just begun, and Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain), and Italian have been officially announced for Google Assistant.
Fun fact: Spanish has more native speakers globally than English, trailing only behind Mandarin in this regard. Given the popularity of services such as Netflix and Hulu, it only makes sense that a Spanish-language movie streaming service would exist as well. Now, Lionsgate has introduced a new service called Pantaya, which will enable US residents to watch hundreds of Spanish-language movies for $5.99 per month.