Internet search giant Google has added Australian slang and
language recognition to its applications, addressing complaints that its
software had difficulty in understanding thick local accents and complex place
names.
Long accustomed to having their distinctive slang misunderstood,
Australians can now substitute "footy" for football, "arvo"
for afternoon and find directions to Mullumbimby or Goondiwindi, a spokesman
told Reuters on Friday.
The extended vocabulary came after Google, which is now part
of holding company Alphabet Inc, added an Australian accented voice to its
Google Maps and search applications last week.
"People are starting to talk to their phones much more
regularly now. Mobile voice searchers have doubled in the last year,"
Google Australia
spokesman Shane Treeves said.
"Particularly all those tricky Aussie place names, they
just sound much better in an Aussie voice that can get them right."
Google and its chief competition, Apple Inc, have saturated
the u. s. and Western Europe
with their devices, going foreign language markets as a number of the prime
places to grow.
In Gregorian calendar month, Apple released a version of its
virtual personal assistant, Siri, for Arabic speakers in the United
Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabian Peninsula.
Google's golem phones' search perform already offered some support in Arabic.
Google's Android software system was employed by roughly 54
percent of mobile devices sold in Australia
in December, placing it prior to Apple iOS at 38 percent, according to data
published by research firm Kantar Worldpanel.
The addition of Australian language features to Google's
software could carry with it a sense of vindication for local users, who have
long groused about its inability to understand them.
In 2004, Google bought mapping company Where 2 Technologies,
which formed the idea for its hugely popular Google Maps software. The company
was based in Sydney.
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