Google Buys A Startup To Improve Google Assistant's Answers

Recently, Google has bought Superpod, a company that can help extend the capability of Google Assistant in giving accurate answers to its users. Superpod, for those who don't already know, is a California-based startup which had built a Q&A mobile app, in which users can submit questions and get answers from experts.

Superpod has been taken over for a purchase price of nearly Rs. 420 crores (roughly $60 million), the price includes hiring founders of the company and acquiring some assets, as reported by Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva. 

Superpod Q&A app

Back in September 2018, the company's founders close down its app “as part of a transition into a larger project," according to a report from publication Fortune. Shortly afterward, the founders explained for the closing in his message:

Recently, Google also confirmed its widely rumored purchase of Superpod in an email to Fortune. However, the company refused to go into detail about its deal with the com startup.

Despite fierce competition from rival voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Apple's Siri, Google Assistant seems to do better than its competitors.

Not long ago, Loup Ventures, a Minneapolis-based venture capital firm, has announced the results of its annual “smart speaker IQ” test, 2018 edition. And unsurprisingly, Google Assistant has surpassed all the other players to become the overall winner with 87.9% questions answered correctly. In 2017, the assistant completed the test with 81.1%. This result was reported by The Street.com and Google Assistant achieved this impressively high score while conducting the test on Google Home smart speaker.

The smart speaker IQ test 's result

In order to assess how smart assistants actually work in reality, this year's competition focuses on smart speakers, specifically Google Home (Google Assistant), Amazon Echo (Alexa), Invoke (Cortana) and HomePod (Siri).