Android Oreo will let apps launch Google Assistant

Google Assistant might be ahead of its competitors when it comes to certain tasks, but third-party integration is not one of those tasks. That looks to significantly change with Android Oreo, though there are a few things to consider.

Thanks to code found on the Android Developers website by XDA Developers, we have learned of the capability for an app to create a new task in Android’s activity manager. In other words, developers can open and run Google Assistant within their apps without the need for folks to leave the apps.

Not only would the feature keep folks within apps, but allows developers to harness Google Assistant’s capabilities. This would also allow Google to buff up its AI assistant quite a bit, since Google wants folks to utilize Google Assistant as much as possible in order to grow even more.

Finally, keep in mind that you can set other virtual assistants as the default. This means that developers can use Google’s AI to integrate the likes of Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa into their apps.

There are a few caveats, the biggest being that you will need to be on a device that runs Oreo. Furthermore, the app itself must support Oreo, which means the initial list of apps that integrates Google Assistant is likely to be small.

With that said, this is great news for folks that constantly use Google Assistant on the daily and for Google itself, since it likely does not want to constantly play catch-up with Alexa, which currently offers better third-party integration. We will keep you updated as the list of apps with Google Assistant integration populates, but in the meantime, let us know in the comments what apps you want to see on that list.