With Google Assistant heading a breath-taking number of devices this year, the search giant is highlighting another key strength: This technology now supports over one million actions, which are essentially things the Assistant can do.

“To start the year off right, we’re at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas showcasing the Assistant at home, on the go and in the car—and all the ways it can help in each of those places.,” Google’s Brad Abrams explains. “It’s been an exciting year to see the platform expand to new languages and devices and to see what [third-party developers have] created.

Developers that create apps for Google Assistant build actions into these apps, expanding the capabilities of the Assistant and making it more useful for users. These actions can span a range of wide capabilities from language translation to online purchasing to games for kids and much more. Over time, as these actions become more and more sophisticated, Google Assistant—like Amazon’s Alexa—becomes smarter, and enables more conversational experiences.

(We’re still waiting on routines, I believe; this feature will let users string multiple actions into a script-like entity that will enable you to say things like “Hey Google, goodnight,” and have the Assistant trigger multiple actions in one go.)

Of course, with over one million actions already available on Google Assistant, just finding out what the Assistant can do can be a bit daunting. So Google has created a new directory on the web, and an updated directory on mobile, so that both developers and end users can learn more. (On mobile, open the Assistant app and navigate to Explore.)

This ecosystem is exploding: Google notes that there are over 400 million Assistant-enabled devices in the world. And that Assistant works with over 1,500 smart devices from over 200 brands, with more on the way.

Tagged with Google Assistant, Google Home