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Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B (axios.com)
16bytes 1076 days ago [-]
For those confused, this acquisition is due in large part by Nuance's dominance in healthcare related products. From Nuance's last earnings release[1]:

“We are very pleased with the strong start to the fiscal year, as we delivered revenue and EPS above our guidance range expectations,” said Mark Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer at Nuance. “We continued to advance our strategic initiatives, accelerating our cloud transition across our core platforms in Healthcare and focusing on our AI-first approach in Enterprise. In Healthcare, we saw solid performance in our cloud-based offerings, growing cloud revenue 28% year-over-year. In particular, we benefited from strong performance in Dragon Medical & DAX Cloud revenue, which grew 22% year-over-year driven by the ongoing transition of our installed base to Dragon Medical One, as well as traction in international, ambulatory and community hospital markets. Enterprise delivered another record revenue quarter, up slightly from its previous record in Q1'20, driven by particularly strong demand for our Security & Biometrics solutions."

Nuance has deep relationships built with nearly every health system in the US and beyond. This fits quite well with Microsoft's corporate focus. Yes, Nuance also has a lot of IP, but I wouldn't expect any consumer facing changes (e.g. Cortana) in the near term.

[1] https://investors.nuance.com/download/EX%2099.1%20Press%20Re...

jesseryoung 1076 days ago [-]
I work in healthcare software and recently did a spike building a voice assistant for the EMR. We compared Google, AWS, Azure and Nuance's voice and intent recognition and Nuance blew all the others out of the water. When it comes to understanding medical terminology Nuance is way ahead of anything other providers have.

Dragon has been around for 23 years and has been THE product for VR in the medical field for at least the last 10 years (from my experience).

jonas21 1076 days ago [-]
Dragon's actually been around since 1982 (39 years). Sad story about the founders, Janet and Jim Baker, though.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-an...

wombatmobile 1075 days ago [-]
The Bakers sued Goldman Sachs for negligence, intentional misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty, which in January 2013 led to a 23-day trial in Boston. The jury cleared Goldman Sachs of all charges.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/business/goldman-sachs-cl...

Ambix 1074 days ago [-]
Very sad story. Two pioneers of voice tech had literally nothing for their hard work.
ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
I think in a lot of cases that is because they tried. You can tell 90% of Google's focus is ad consumers when they develop new services, whereas Nuance has sold medical-focused dictation tools for over a decade.
2fast4you 1076 days ago [-]
Wow, did not know EMR voice assistant was a thing. Can’t wait till our team works on something like this
throwaway823882 1075 days ago [-]
Every medical practitioner has been begging for voice EMR for like 10 years. EHR systems are a nightmare to update; a doctor basically needs an intern with an iPad to wander behind them and translate their dictation into EHR. Whoever controls this space will have a close relationship with every doctor and nurse (and any EMRs that don't will seriously falter)
hbosch 1076 days ago [-]
I worked years ago at a major cell phone mfg company, and we were comparing vendors (circa 2013-2014) for the voice recognition/transcription software. I remember two of the leading options were SoundHound (dba then as "Hound", which has since gone to market as a voice solution[0]) and Nuance which was a company not many of us had ever heard of.

At the time, Hound actually was very very good at language recognition and impressed everyone quite a bit. Compared to Nuance, the experience of conversing with Hound was better as I remember. However, Nuance had the edge in language support... while Hound was great for Western dialects of English, and some others, Nuance supported Mandarin. End of the day it was no contest which product we had to go with.

I'm not surprised that Nuance had continued to be an industry leader all these years.

...

0. https://www.soundhound.com/hound

tootie 1076 days ago [-]
I'm pretty sure Nuance also does the Comcast Xfinity voice remotes. They are actually really well done. And it's a humongous customer to have your claws in.
marktangotango 1076 days ago [-]
I have this and it really is quite remarkable. The entire voice integration in the x1 set top box is really polished. Other than the occasional "wow, this is pretty good for comcast!" I hadn't given it much thought until now.
DaiPlusPlus 1076 days ago [-]
Can you remove the ads from the EPG?
ryanSrich 1076 days ago [-]
It’s literally better than Siri. I don’t know how, but it is. I’d say it’s even better than Alexa in terms of its ability to recognize things I say.
jxramos 1076 days ago [-]
I think they've been at it for a pretty long time with old products like Dragon. A friend used to work there some years back and said they pretty much perfected speech detection up to some very reasonable error rate. I imagine they've just continued to cover all the dark corner cases and irregularities and accents etc.
pie420 1076 days ago [-]
No, the real challenge now is how do you minimize the amount of processing power needed, or bandwidth needed, and how do you do all this while minimizing translation time to under 0.5 seconds.

Obviously accents and irregularities are also areas I'm sure they are focusing on, but I imagine that optimizing for real time, mobile and low CPU power devices is a huge focus for them.

geenew 1076 days ago [-]
They ran dragon on contemporary computers, and that was very good at least 10 years ago, probably more. So they have voice recognition working well on what would now be considered very constrained hardware.
tootie 1075 days ago [-]
I had an early version of Dragon on Tandy running Windows 3.1. And it was pretty usable. Not just dictation it could imitate mouse clicks when you said stuff like "maximize window".
tootie 1076 days ago [-]
The biggest leg up they have is that their product works in a very controlled domain. Siri is out there trying to be a complete interactive AI human and failing miserably. The Xfinity remote just controls your TV and does it smashingly. I found the Alexa-driven voice control on my FireTV to also be a pleasant experience compared to regular Alexa.
Pokepokalypse 1076 days ago [-]
Ironically, Siri (as a virtual assistant) came from SRI's Darpa program "CALO" back in the 2000's. SRI also has a speech recognition platform called EduSpeak, and that is the codebase that was licensed to Nuance for their product.

However, after Siri was sold to Apple, I don't think that they retained the EduSpeak portion for speech-to-text. (I honestly don't know - but it seems to me it did not; I don't think Apple wanted to pay that license fee to SRI).

kelnos 1076 days ago [-]
The TV remote only has to understand TV-related things, like inputs, channels, volume, and program names. Siri and Alexa have to understand everything.
meroes 1076 days ago [-]
Not true.

"Xfinity Home, dim the bathroom lights to 40%"

"Youtube Yuri Gagarin"

Are both things it knows how to execute.

tomcam 1076 days ago [-]
I use Siri every day. Former radio guy. Siri is horrible even for me
_cerv 1076 days ago [-]
They do. The amount of magic involved to make it work is amazing from an engineering perspective.
nickfromseattle 1076 days ago [-]
Microsoft already has relationships with Comcast [0] and nearly every major telecommunication around the world.

[0] https://cloudsolutions.comcast.com/apps/64168/office-365#!ov...

And 100% agreed, the voice is great on the Xfinity remote. Was very impressed.

1076 days ago [-]
dkdk8283 1076 days ago [-]
Universal remote control makes all Comcast remotes.
spoonjim 1076 days ago [-]
Forum crowds will look to the tech but this is bang on, CEOs are ultimately coin operated and any company would salivate to get their hands on a vendor that is so deeply burrowed into the operations of the healthcare industry.
samstave 1076 days ago [-]
And now you know why there will never ever ever be “free healthcare for all” in the US because this is how profitable sickness is. Plandemic.
srmarm 1076 days ago [-]
Yes / No
1076 days ago [-]
ejb999 1076 days ago [-]
>>“free healthcare for all”

There never has been and will never be 'free healthcare for all' - its not free, it's only free for some people if some other people pay for it.

FireBeyond 1076 days ago [-]
I'm curious who you think is actually out there laboring under the assumption that healthcare becomes absolutely, and literally, free?
inopinatus 1076 days ago [-]
Given the venue of these remarks, and the otherwise reductio ad absurdum of the alternatives, we can surmise this is referring to free as in speech, not free as in beer, and they mean santé libre, to distinguish it from proprietary licensed healthcare.
1076 days ago [-]
fakedang 1076 days ago [-]
A lot of Europeans in the lower taxpaying tiers who love to shit on Americans (especially when the American healthcare system has been getting so much coverage the past decade).
FourthProtocol 1076 days ago [-]
Some examples would be useful. Yes, many that don't pay tax benefit from the government, and yes, you can view that as a working class paying for the unemployed.

Imagine, if you will, a 50-year-old woman on the dole (she's paid a monthly sum by the government). In Germany, for instance, this is only paid if she can prove that she applied, and continues to apply for work/seek employment.

It's a bit of a mad circle - she doesn't want work, because she has a comfortable, if meagre life. Of course she dutifully applies for employment every month, and occasionally lands an interview.

She's been out of work for so long though, that's she's no longer employable. She's too old for manual labour, cannot type, doesn't do Internet. And so no one will have her.

It's not ideal for someone expecting to get out what they put into the system, but it's a social safety net that's better than forcing people out onto the street. Will all the problems that brings.

And yes, the 50-year-old gets "free" healthcare. Which I contribute to, from my hard work. And I think this system among the best on the planet.

kelnos 1076 days ago [-]
> And yes, the 50-year-old gets "free" healthcare. Which I contribute to, from my hard work. And I think this system among the best on the planet.

I wish more people had that attitude.

Instead, in the US, we have people actively making their own lives worse because they don't want to give others things they don't believe they "deserve".

If taking more out of my paycheck would get all the homeless people off the streets, I would happily do that. I personally believe that everyone has a right to housing, but even if I didn't care about people, I'd be ok with it because getting homeless people off the streets makes my life better too.

Ensuring that people aren't insecure about housing and food translates to lower crime rates and safer neighborhoods.

It makes me genuinely angry that anti-welfare people don't get this, and actively lobby against their own interest. I'm sure there are some people who just believe that welfare programs don't work, and are against them on those grounds, but most of the rhetoric I hear seems to be around not giving people things they haven't worked for and don't deserve.

_carbyau_ 1076 days ago [-]
Your last paragraph is the bit that resonates with me.

Paying taxes to treat people humanely and with dignity is a good option because when people are desperate, riots and violence are not far away.

And if your thoughts are to push people to that extreme so you can be violent against them, then it is you who are the lesser person.

fnord77 1076 days ago [-]
we americans seem to prefer paying for bombs more than paying to have our own citizens treated decently
IG_Semmelweiss 1075 days ago [-]
i think you are referring to the american government.

now, we are suckers for people giving us promises that they cant seem to keep. That's a different story.

FireBeyond 1076 days ago [-]
As someone who was born under the NHS in Scotland, grew up in Australia under its Medicare system (and the introduction of partial privatiz(s)ation), and has lived in the US since 2006, no-one is laboring under that misapprehension. Medicare tax is indeed a line item on Australian taxation paperwork.
fakedang 1076 days ago [-]
I don't know where you get the impression that I'm criticizing the NHS or a nationalized Healthcare service. I'm all for a nationalized healthcare service. My issue is with people who pay nil significant taxes in Europe gloating ignorantly about how European Healthcare is free, and won't stop shitting on American Healthcare. Yeah, your healthcare is cheaper than the US but it isn't free. There is a whole bunch of middle class folks and upper class folks paying for it.
vagrantJin 1076 days ago [-]
Bruh.

You have deep issues. No thinking thinks anything is free. Its free as in I can walk in get treated and walk out without having a cent or anyone asking about my credit details. The difference is in the quality of care as gov run hospitals have much tighter budget constraints and can't treat patients with as much delicacy as private medical institutions.

fakedang 1076 days ago [-]
> You have deep issues

Thanks for the personal attacks. Highly appreciated /s

> The difference is in the quality of care as gov run hospitals have much tighter budget constraints and can't treat patients with as much delicacy as private medical institutions.

Yet somehow places such as Singapore, Thailand and Japan manage to provide top notch healthcare even in government institutions, healthcare that is much better than most private European hospitals.

And yes, my point was exactly about how a not insignificant number of people in Europe seem to think that their healthcare comes for free (because they don't pay tax for a variety of reasons).

inopinatus 1076 days ago [-]
No; everyone knows that goods and services, including those supplied by government, come at an economic cost.

This slur of outright idiocy via economic illiteracy is fiction, and applying slurs to people from a specific region on the basis of their economic circumstances is bigotry 101, so the personal admonishment above is hardly surprising.

vagrantJin 1076 days ago [-]
Sure. Personal attacks are uncalled for and I retract that part of my statement.

But the rest of my points still stand.

ratsforhorses 1076 days ago [-]
Just a thought, "paying nil significant taxes" would mean lower or nil income...? we could also include refugees, prisoners in that group I guess.... these people, may also be providing a huge extra to society in the form of being low paid, having future potential or not adding to externalisation costs such as increased infrastructure needs higher income earners do... also I think the main criticisms of the US health system is that insurance is in most cases part of the job contract and that there are huge (cost) inefficiencies due to insurers battling over coverage costs with health providers... as an aside I live in Romania and as a low income earner I forgoe insurance because it's a lot cheaper to get care when I need it
jschwartzi 1076 days ago [-]
> insurance is in most cases part of the job contract and that there are huge (cost) inefficiencies due to insurers battling over coverage costs with health providers.

To say nothing of how maddening it is to have to change doctors every time we change jobs, or to lose coverage for certain conditions when we change jobs, or to have to perfectly time certain life events such as childbirth or pregnancy to either before or after we change jobs, or to make sure we don't get sick during the probationary period while we're changing jobs, and so on.

kelnos 1076 days ago [-]
Even if there is a large group of people who believe that, why do you care so much? How do their beliefs, as foolish as they may be, actually negatively impact you?
1076 days ago [-]
haerra 1076 days ago [-]
Uhm, I guess that you have some inner frustrations, as I have yet to meet someone who thinks that healtcare is literally free.
fakedang 1076 days ago [-]
If you're talking about people who for some reason don't understand European tax laws (which is a lot of people in the mainland and in the US), yeah I'm quite frustrated.

My issue is with people who pay nil significant taxes in Europe gloating ignorantly about how European Healthcare is free, and won't stop shitting on American Healthcare. Yeah, your healthcare is cheaper than the US but it isn't free. There is a whole bunch of middle class folks and upper class folks paying for it. And I'm not even supporting the American model.

ZuLuuuuuu 1076 days ago [-]
That is not reality, that is what American right thinks about European people. We of course know that we are paying for healthcare with our taxes, but we also know that in the end what we pay is lower than what we would pay without a government healthcare system. So we chose this healthcare system consciously.
IG_Semmelweiss 1075 days ago [-]
Do we though?

What % of the general population do you think can actually come close to estimate the real cost of their complete annual health care premium cost (let alone actual procedures or services like emergencies)?

And what subset of that do you think would be incredibly shocked at the actual price ?

xwolfi 1076 days ago [-]
Yeah well I'm a European who was in the middle tax bracket before fleeing communism to move to China and I can tell you: the situation in Europe is unsustainable with all the youth and elders voting for "free healthcare" (it's so hard to make them understand it's free for them but oh so expensive for many others) while the people who actually find ways to produce a bit of value foreigners might be interested in, work for free to pay for it...

The American healthcare system is not an healthcare system, it's a disgrace. The European ones are vast communist machines that can't pay for themselves. The best is the one I see here in Hong Kong: you pay small taxes for it, you pay for anything non critical, you get a socialized base service of average quality with very very good private healthcare that you pay for. And a network of banks providing health insurance for an okay price.

For instance, you can use taxpayers money to give birth if you want, but you don't choose the date, you don't get a room for long and no way you get a C-Section unless you risk dying. In the private hospital you pay a lot, get all those things, but it's not at all necessary.

I really like this compromise, which in hindsight just is obvious and shows you the shark Americans and the hippies Europeans just can't make compromises. You shouldn't have to die because you can't afford a surgery, and you shouldn't have to work 4 months a year for the State because it can't afford to give surgery for every wart on every butthole.

barbazoo 1076 days ago [-]
> the situation in Europe is unsustainable with all the youth and elders voting for "free healthcare" (it's so hard to make them understand it's free for them but oh so expensive for many others)

I think you might misunderstand how the systems work. First of all, there is no such thing as European healthcare. Every country has their own system. In Germany for instance, 14.6% of your post tax income go towards healthcare (capped at a post tax income of EUR 58.050). No one thinks it's free and it isn't free for anybody except for those who really cannot afford it which have never heard anyone critizise.

FireBeyond 1076 days ago [-]
When I left Australia, which is now 14 years ago, so grain of salt: you paid 1% income tax for Medicare, unless you were above a certain income level, in which it became 1.5%. If you opted out of the system, you could purchase private insurance, and would not be subject to this tax. There was a floor, where below or near "minimum income" levels, you were also not required to pay this tax.

> For instance, you can use taxpayers money to give birth if you want, but you don't choose the date, you don't get a room for long and no way you get a C-Section unless you risk dying.

This makes absolutely no sense. Short of induction agents, which have varying degrees of efficacy, if you're not getting a C-section, the healthcare industry, hospital, don't decide when you give birth, you/your baby do.

nl 1076 days ago [-]
(Australian here)

Note that the 1% (or 1.5%) Medicare levy doesn't fully fund the health system here.

rswail 1076 days ago [-]
The Medicare levy has never actually covered the cost of our public health system. It's theoretically a hypothecated tax that goes to health care, but the system is funded, like everything else, out of general revenue.

The system in Australia is:

* All Australian permanent residents (and some travellers) are able to access Medicare services. The services are funded by a combination of Federal and State governments.

* GPs/Surgeons/Specialists get set amounts from Medicare for different services delivered to patients. The amounts are set by the Federal health department and is the subject to ongoing arguments between the service providers and the government about the amount paid.

* For GP and out patient services, if the provider is willing to deliver the service at the set amount, then they "bulk bill" and the service is delivered "free at the point of delivery" to the paitent. If the provider charges more, then there is a "gap" that must be paid by the patient and cannot (by law and regulation) be covered by private insurance.

* For in-patient services, patients are either "private" or "public". Publicly funded hospitals accept patients of both types, private hospitals only accept "private" patients.

* Private patient services still receive the same reimbursement at a set value from the government. However, if the provider charges over that rate, private insurance is allowed to cover that "gap". Insurance companies can offer differing plans with different levels of cover for that "gap", as well as offering things like single patient wards, choice of physician/specialist etc.

* Public patients in a public hospital receive exactly the same services as private patients, but they: a) don't get to choose their doctor, b) are subject to waiting lists based on capacity, degree of urgency, etc.

* A public patient at a public hospital receives all services "free at the point of delivery". Private patients receive the same reimbursement, then their private insurance will reimburse according to their plan, then any remaining "gap" is payable by the patient.

* The "Medicare levy" is a theoretical additional tax that is added to a person's marginal tax, but it has never really covered the cost.

* As an incentive to get private insurance, the government subsidizes it at 30% and there are sticks and carrots (increased Medicare levy, age related reduction in subsidy if insurance is not continually held etc).

* Private insurance price increases are government regulated and require approval of the minister each year.

Subsidies for prescription medicines is a completely different system (the "PBS").

AdrianB1 1076 days ago [-]
I opened my last paycheck, the tax is 10% (Eastern Europe).

There is some undeniable truth in this discussion: people with higher income pay for the people with lower income. 10% of 100,000€ is a lot more than 10% of 20,000€.

kelnos 1076 days ago [-]
And so what? That's how a functioning society should work. I would much rather have 90k€ after health care taxes than 18k€; the higher earner is still coming out far ahead.

It's not like the private insurance system is "equitable" either. I am very healthy and hardly ever need to see a doctor, but my insurance comes in at around $650/mo (mostly paid by my employer, but the money still has to come from somewhere). I definitely do not incur anywhere near $650/mo in health care costs of my own; I'm paying for care for people much sicker than I am, who incur health care costs higher than what they pay into insurance.

dmingod666 1076 days ago [-]
Because 20K is a smaller number than 100K.

Taxes work with the basic assumption that people need some money to live, there is a humanitarian aspect to it if you see the govt positively or you can say, people in govt dont like thier head too far away from their bodies..

emj 1076 days ago [-]
Considering disposable income; 10% of 100,000€ is alot less, taxes are not noticable for me as a high income earner.
fakedang 1076 days ago [-]
I don't know why you want to draw comparisons to the Australian system here. We're comparing European to American, and the vast amount of ignorant thought in Europe about how healthcare is free.
FireBeyond 1076 days ago [-]
Because the comment I replied to mentioned nothing to do with Europe?

> There never has been and will never be 'free healthcare for all' - its not free, it's only free for some people if some other people pay for it.

That's what I replied to. I also mentioned living with one European system, and a similar Australian system that are both largely considered "effectively free (or at least, out of pocket)", and how no-one living under either system that I've been a part of, thinks that their healthcare is "literally free".

In fact, most of the tropes about "It's not really free, you're paying for it with taxes!" come from Americans bemoaning the insidious evil that they consider "healthcare for all" systems to be. It's a straw man, built up by some to decry "socialism".

andybak 1076 days ago [-]
> before fleeing communism to move to China

Is there some level of humour here that I'm missing? (and yes I know all the subtleties around the Chinese system. But still - that's a heck of a sentence to throw out uncritically)

fakedang 1076 days ago [-]
He makes a lot of valid points about the unsustainability of the European system, but yeah couldn't help a chuckle at that line.
chipotle_coyote 1076 days ago [-]
The "valid points" about how socialism will surely drive all of Europe bankrupt within the next decade have been repeated for the last seventy years. I'm sure they're right this time, though.
fakedang 1076 days ago [-]
Of course, the European model is extremely sustainable if you can ignore the not insignificant amount of cost cutting and lack of coverage of certain drugs for orphan diseases. You can literally just talk to any doctor or nurse in the NHS system and ask them about how quality of care has declined over the past decade, while their professionals' workload has only increased unsustainably. And we're talking about one of the best run healthcare systems in Europe here.

It's of course nothing like the American system which is a bastardization of Healthcare, but it's no utopia either. Costs of delivering healthcare have increased in Europe mostly due to wasteful spending.

I don't know if you bothered to read his points after the first line, but he clearly outlined the Asian model of healthcare, and clearly criticizes the American model.

FireBeyond 1076 days ago [-]
> lack of coverage of certain drugs for orphan diseases

This is literally the case in the US too. It's not "right" in Europe, when it happens, nor is it in the US.

US pharma companies have, repeatedly, discontinued cheaper, and in some cases, the only effective, medications when they've deemed them not profitable enough.

oblio 1076 days ago [-]
> The European ones are vast communist machines that can't pay for themselves.

Do you have any proof of that?

AdrianB1 1076 days ago [-]
A family member is an expert in this area working for the government in a high position for a long time and they update quarterly the estimations on when the system will fall, not if. The current calculation is less than 15 years and it is fairly constant for the past 10-15 years. In the discussions they have between countries the situation varies a lot, from countries that are going from default to default like Greece) or close (PIGS) to countries that are almost stable (Germany), but on average the situation is bad.

For example I was told 10 years ago never to expect to retire because there will be no money for the public pension system when I will have the age. It is on an accelerating fall and the politicians are messing it up even further, pensions were increased by law by 40% about a year ago: if there is no future, you can start ruining the present.

ptsneves 1076 days ago [-]
This is a bit of a misterpretation. Yes they make that calculation but to know how to adjust the age of retirement and because there are shunt laws that limit the expenditure to a given percentage of gdp.

Portugal(p in pigs) is such a country and this shunt law is a 2/3 law meaning if debt ceilings are overridden by government or parliament it will be struck down by the constitutional court. just recently there was such a law and it was promptly sent there. E

jxramos 1076 days ago [-]
I don't get it, isn't China communist too. Has that become an in name only thing? But yah there's no silver bullets as someone likes to say, tradeoffs are something adults recognize and have to manage.
seanmcdirmid 1076 days ago [-]
The more correct term for universal healthcare rather than free should be cheaper as everyone with such systems wind up spending much less on healthcare than the USA. We basically spend as much per capita on our public system than other countries do on healthcare overall, and then we also have a private system that is even more costly.
rand49an 1076 days ago [-]
America spends the highest amount per capita & the most in total terms by a large margin and they aren't able to cover 100% of their citizens.

Nobody thinks that healthcare is magically free in the rest of the world, but at least in countries with socialised medicine people pay into a system that covers everyone in society.

dopidopHN 1076 days ago [-]
You pay with your taxes. Is that this hard to understand?

In France when my boss give me 1 euros, he has to give 0.33 cents to a found that goes toward my healthcare. Then most things are « free ». From regular doc appointments to oncologists.

Here I pay 500$/month, and then some co-pay and then some more.

It’s not that different.

kevin_thibedeau 1076 days ago [-]
France doesn't have $20 aspirin pills.
thebruce87m 1076 days ago [-]
I’ve never seen anyone argue that. Well, until now anyway.
ladyanita22 1076 days ago [-]
Agreed
luke2m 1076 days ago [-]
Yes, that makes sense
conanbatt 1076 days ago [-]
Oh wow. The Dragon headset is a very strange product space. It is used by non-tech savvy doctors to avoid having to type into the EMR.
riahi 1076 days ago [-]
It’s not just the non tech savvy. It’s substantially faster to dictate text than type it, especially if your hands are occupied with the computer doing something else (ie interpreting radiology exams, dictating a treatment course or visit note while simultaneously reviewing labs).
conanbatt 1076 days ago [-]
Only if no one reads the output.
dalbasal 1076 days ago [-]
I think a lot of big acquisitions make "sense," given the current market.

The most successful companies have lots of cash, high share prices, and amazing cash cows. They could borrow for (almost) free, so resources are practically unlimited. Their R&D is already well funded. Most of their big, growth oriented endeavours are not cash-constrained. There are usually no factories to build or production to scale up.

Google tried "20% time." They tried "let many flowers grow." Those things seemed ambitious at 2007-scale. In 2021 terms... new flowers need to be S&P 500 companies to represent growth, instead of just clutter. "Meaningful growth," for Alphabet, is a big number.

How else does a MSFT, Google or (especially) FB put $20bn to work? Acquiring "just works."

Of course, there are in-house alternatives. Waymo is an in-house investment by Alphabet that's bigger than this Nuance acquisition... especially if you consider the $bns Waymo will continue to need until some unknown future date. Self driving is looking more hopeful (certainly to investors) than it was when waymo started.... but waymo is still a dubious investment.

Consider that Google could have bought any car company, for about as much as waymo will cost eventually. Car companies have loans, so you could quibble the math... but details.

Acquiring is easy. The path of least resistance wins >50% of the time. We have that dynamic here, both in the human/managers sense and in the arbitrage-like incentives in the market currently.

bombcar 1076 days ago [-]
Acquiring is a simple way to show the Board/Shareholders that you're "doing something" - but I suspect it's rarely very successful in the long run. Unless you acquire a business that ACTUALLY provides some synergies you're just on the path of transitioning from a successful company to a poor imitation of Berkshire Hathaway.

It does have the advantage that you can "spin off" your acquisitions once they fail to do anything interesting (though this is more commonly seen in sunset industries/dying companies (see AOL, Compaq, etc)).

dalbasal 1076 days ago [-]
I was actually thinking "Satya, you know that Berkshire is you end game here... right?"

I agree, but I think MSFT (and friends) are in this predicament no matter what. What's the alternative?

That said, I don't really think BRK is the end game.

For one thing, Berkshire is kind of an exception. There are plenty of smaller conglomerates that are actually like Berkshire, but most pretend not to be conglomerates. They pretend to be far more cohesive & synergetic than Berkshire.

Also, Alphabet shows that synergies can be easy to find. Youtube, Android... This generation's acquisitions need to be 10X bigger than that. But... these companies are in uncharted waters. No company has wielded free resources at the scale that MSFT now operates. They aren't the only one currently, but they don't have predecessors... unless we go back to VOC or somesuch.

OTOH... Satya is accidentally in the same position Buffet intentionally sought: Sitting on a pile of capital that must be allocated.

pedrocr 1076 days ago [-]
> I agree, but I think MSFT (and friends) are in this predicament no matter what. What's the alternative?

Returning money to shareholders is the common solution for when you don't know how to grow more and profitability in the businesses you're already in and don't have any particular advantage in entering new ones. I'm not saying that's what they should be doing but sitting on a pile of capital that you don't know what to do with isn't a new problem that we need to invent new solutions for.

nemothekid 1076 days ago [-]
My own uneducated position is that is a new problem because shareholders don't want their money back. Shareholders have been piling money into stocks [1], so if you gave them the money back they would likely just put it right back into Microsoft (or, more likely, it would signal that Microsoft doesn't know what to do with the money, so people would pull out of Microsoft to invest somewhere else).

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-money-poured-stocks-past...

intuitionist 1076 days ago [-]
If they reinvested the dividend right back in MSFT then MSFT can give its owners a tax break and get the same economic result by buying back shares.
dalbasal 1076 days ago [-]
"Returning money to shareholders" is largely a consequence macroeconomic policy or state of affairs. It is, evidently, not actually a choice that CEOs currently have in practice. Dividends and/or buybacks are one of the powers shareholders do tend to wield, in practice. They want to invest more, not less.

Also, IDK if it is a common solution. Nothing is really common at MSFT-scale. A free cash flow like Google, Alphabet, etc. is almost unprecedented.

Meanwhile, I do actually think that this is better for shareholders. IMO "Synergies" is a term somewhere between euphemism and a boomerism but for the purpose of "shareholder value" it doesn't matter. At Monopoly/Unicorn/FAANG scale, there are big opportunities for synergy. Think Google-Android.

Why is Nuance being owned by Alphabet less efficient than being traded independently or owned by private investors? Why is Alphabet owning vanguard more efficient than owning Nuance?

The answer to those question can have no actual impact on reality. If the acquired business is cash generative, they can left to their devices. If the parent company doesn't borrow, then "efficiency" never becomes explicit. Explicit efficiency is relative to cost of borrowing. Implicit efficiency is implied by share prices... and at this point things get foggy.

kelnos 1076 days ago [-]
> I agree, but I think MSFT (and friends) are in this predicament no matter what. What's the alternative?

Well, they can just stop growing, and continue doing what works. If that thing stops working (or they have a good belief that it will stop working before too long), they have two options: 1) do nothing, and gradually wind the company down and return capital to shareholders so they can reinvest it elsewhere, or 2) pivot, and accept that the things they are pivoting to will be a rounding error in their finances for years while they grow.

Obviously this is disastrous in our current economic system; a company that tried this would watch its stock price fall into the toilet before too long. But absent that, why not?

Consolidation is what will bring us to a corporate-run dystopia. I would much rather the world be filled mostly with small and medium sized businesses, with every market open to a lot of competition and even cooperation (on standards, not on prices). But I know, that's just a pipe dream, and humans generally suck at cooperation when money is involved.

dalbasal 1076 days ago [-]
>> a company that tried this would watch its stock price fall into the toilet.. But absent that, why not?

lol

>> Consolidation is what will bring us to a corporate-run dystopia. I would much rather the world be filled mostly with small and medium sized businesses...

The alternative to that is trust busting, perhaps. I was commenting on the market logic, so to speak. If we're optimistic, maybe it'll be a corporate-run utopia. Zuck's not great, but I think this generation is kinder than the Carnegie/Rockefeller days.

Look... if Bezos, Zuck, and such continue on trend, they'll soon be very rich. Bigger than the Rockefeller. Their companies will be one par with the VOC/EIC in terms of market cap, but I don't know if it's really comparable to that.

Google/FB are sketchy, if trust-busting comes into play. Advertising is sensitive to both regulation and trustbusting. A ban on snooping, manipulation and overly vigorous advertising would hurt advertising. Trust-busting, like separating adwords from google, hurts advertising monopolies too.

Meanwhile, what happens if a regulator messes up and breaks FB? Would the world lack for social messaging media? If Ford stops making cars, fewer cars are made in the world. If fewer FB likes happen, more sploosh sploshes happen and all is well in the world...

More likely though, no help is coming. That being the case, I think the tech bros aren't the worst candidates for trillionaire status. Someone had to be it. I'm glad it isn't the real estate bros.

Pokepokalypse 1076 days ago [-]
Well; having been employed at 4 different companies in the past, where those companies were purchased and then shut down by a competitor - I'm pretty sure that consolidation is almost always a bad thing. For the workers, and the consumers.
perardi 1076 days ago [-]
Apple has had some decent ones. P.A. Semi, notably. And for $278 million dollars, the ROI on that was ludicrous.

But overall, yes. I can think of so many large-scale acquisitions that didn't go so swimmingly.

  - AOL/Time-Warner
  - Ford/its stable of luxury brands like Jaguar and Land Rover
  - Compaq/HP
  - Daimler/Chrysler
It seems like these “big” mergers tend to now show the synergies people promise. Maybe it’s just too much culture to integrate.
mbesto 1076 days ago [-]
Tech M&A guy here.

This is survivorship bias at its finest.

How about Facebook's acquisition of Instagram? Google's acquisition of YouTube? Android? DoubleClick? Amazon's acquisition of Twitch? I could go on.

For the record, yes there are VERY many acquisitions that go wrong, especially when you get to the $B+ value. The parent's characterization seems in line with the "no one ever got fired for using IBM" and that sentiment is grossly unjustified for M&A. There are a bunch of other factors that go into corporate strategy. One example - buying a competitor to eliminate competition and thus protecting future dollars.

sumedh 1075 days ago [-]
> Facebook's acquisition of Instagram? Google's acquisition of YouTube? Android? DoubleClick? Amazon's acquisition of Twitch? I could go on.

These examples are not comparable to what the OP was saying, e.g AOL/Time-Warner, Compaq/HP are mergers of giants with lot of employees.

mbesto 1075 days ago [-]
Ok fine. Here ya go:

BoA/Merrill Lynch

Shell/Royal Dutch

Sanofi/Avantis

Glaxo/SmithKline

P&G/Gillette

Roche/Genetech

Exxon/Mobil

Conoco/Philips

Disney/Fox

AT&T has had so many successful mergers that the government has basically had to split them up every time because it made them into a monopoly.

Should I go on?

EDIT: PS - DoubelClick in 2007 was considered "BIG". It had 1200 employees and was bought for $3.1B. Which was A LOT at the time.

sumedh 1074 days ago [-]
Those are good examples, you should have included them in the first post.
bredren 1076 days ago [-]
Skype’s eventual acquisition by Microsoft is an interesting one.

Can anyone contextualize the horse trading that led to that?

>September 2005, eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion.

In September 2009, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced the acquisition of 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion from eBay.

Microsoft bought Skype in May 2011 for $8.5 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype

tambourine_man 1076 days ago [-]
>Apple has had some decent ones. P.A. Semi, notably

And, let's not forget, NeXT.

Probably one of the best U$400 something million ever spent.

microtherion 1076 days ago [-]
It's funny how there seems to be so little correlation between acquisition prices and eventual value. The PA Semi acquisition was an enormous success at what was at the time a tiny price. NeXT was an enormous success, though $400M at the time was a bet-the-farm price for Apple.

In contrast, while I'm sure Beats has easily paid for itself, $3B was not exactly cheap, and the results were not 10x PA Semi.

tambourine_man 1076 days ago [-]
I remember people being flabbergasted by the price they paid for PA Semi. Dividing the price by the number of engineers seemed indeed ludicrous. And yet, here we are.
microtherion 1076 days ago [-]
At the time, there were only 3 comments on HN I could find. One of them was certainly questioning the decision: [1]

But wmf was right on the money [2]: "Maybe Apple thinks they can outdo the Cortex".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=171511

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=171879

tambourine_man 1071 days ago [-]
Good find. I was a lot more focused on PPC back then. After Apple switched to Intel, I didn’t really see the reason for PA Semi’s acquisition.

The iPhone’s magic was all about the software to me.

saagarjha 1075 days ago [-]
I'm amused to see 'wmf commenting today about M1 ;)
clove 1074 days ago [-]
Who is wmf?
mbesto 1076 days ago [-]
I think it's impossible to accurately determine the ROI of an acquisition with incomplete data. There's way too many factors at play.
perardi 1076 days ago [-]
I thought about NeXT, but that was a bit of a weird one, because NeXT executives and technology replaced a lot of Apple’s executives and technology. That ended up being a stealth takeover by NeXT.
john_moscow 1076 days ago [-]
Based on my personal experience, since 2008 more and more companies are about showing somebody that you are "doing something" with their money. It could be the VCs, it could be the EU grants, it could be the stockholders, but that's the business model you get with the abundance of capital and low interest rates.
wayoutthere 1076 days ago [-]
I think this was once true, but is significantly less so in the context of cloud platforms. It’s very easy from a business model standpoint for Microsoft to integrate Nuance NLP modules with Azure and start selling access to them at list prices very quickly.

You don’t need to hunt new customers with a marketing plan; you likely already have customers with these needs in your pipeline so it’s a matter of making sure your AEs know what’s happening. Everything is simpler at scale in a cloud business model, which is why these 3 companies in particular are eating the world.

tachyonbeam 1076 days ago [-]
Can't you just acquire a successful business and then do nothing? Just let the business you acquired keep being successful? It's not that different from investing in the stock market, except that you can have more control over the business you acquired if you need to down the line. You also then own their IP, which might be the most important part.
sib 1076 days ago [-]
Here's the challenge:

Let's say there is a business that is successful and generating $10B in revenue and $1B in profit and valued at $15B market cap.

Now you want to buy it.

Historically, you will have to pay something like a 40% premium to its market value in order to acquire it. So you will pay $21B ($15B * 1.4) to own this company.

If you "just do nothing," then the company will presumably still generate $10B in revenue and $1B in profit (and really still be "worth" $15B).

So, you paid $21B for something worth $15B, making the shareholders of the selling company very happy and the shareholders of your company sad.

As a CEO, this is a good way to lose your job.

Effectively, you are forced to present (and attempt to execute) a plan for how the combined business either generates more revenue or has lower costs than the two companies did separately in order to get your board's approval on behalf of your shareholders.

benreesman 1076 days ago [-]
I think that’s what GP meant by poor imitation of BH.
CerealFounder 1076 days ago [-]
Its rarely the syngeries that make it work, instead its often they bought a business they leave alone that has much more room to grow.
dalbasal 1076 days ago [-]
IDK if it's rare that synergies work, so much that it's common for synergies to fail.

Consider Google. They acquired Youtube, Android... Google's skillset was perfect for taking these proving concepts and making them 1080px, so to speak. Now, Youtube and android feed users & data to the adwords cash machine. Youtube and android defend the adwords castle, denying competitors. Fantastic synergy.

OTOH, no company will ever find a synergy with ebay. They have spiky bits where companies are supposed to have copulation bits.

_delirium 1076 days ago [-]
Google acquiring YouTube also had good synergy because it caused bandwidth costs to plummet, which YouTube was having a hard time managing as a startup. The company was bleeding money on bandwidth, because they were an end user who had to pay an upstream ISP for transport [1]. Once Google acquired them, suddenly they're on effectively a backbone network and have settlement-free peering with all kinds of other networks. That drove bandwidth costs down to near zero according to one analysis [2].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/cheaper-bandwidth-or...

[2] https://www.wired.com/2009/10/youtube-bandwidth/

dalbasal 1076 days ago [-]
Yep.

Also, "just give it as much resources as it needs, we're rich" was a game google had already proved willing to win with gmail.

It's easy to lay the tactic out in retrospect. Fund "resource hogs" that users don't pay for. Bet on long term bandwidth costs going down. Bet on major consumer monopolies being valuable, long term. Sounds great and it was great.

OTOH, lets pour $mns into a "business" that we bought for $bns, that has no revenue... because in 15 years we will be worth $trns and it will all sound like peanuts... this was once considered imprudent business planning. Google were willing to do it. Others weren't. Only a few even could.

mbesto 1076 days ago [-]
> you're just on the path of transitioning from a successful company to a poor imitation of Berkshire Hathaway.

You mean Berkshire Hathaway, that's current market cap is ~$615B and hails arguably one of the most successful investors of all time as its CEO? That Berkshire?

I don't know about you, but I'd happily be just 1/100th as successful as how that model turned out.

ffggvv 1076 days ago [-]
google maps and youtube and instagram were acquisitions

2/3 of those arguably are among the most important parts of their respective companies

fomine3 1076 days ago [-]
Just curious the difference of Waymo and Boston Dynamics.
bombcar 1076 days ago [-]
Is it just me or have speech recognition platforms like Siri actually gone backwards in the last few years (roughly coinciding with the AI/ML craze)?

It feels (anecdata) that Siri is doing a bit better on voice to tex when sending messages but much worse on simple commands like “turn off living room lights”.

everdrive 1076 days ago [-]
This never seems to be a popular opinion on hn, but this is the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine: A complex ai built by a billion dollar company, an enormous amount of man hours, only so that switching a light switch because slower, and less deterministic. I'm certainly not suggesting that there are no valid uses for ML/AI, but digital assistants seem to be an enormous waste.
nsriv 1076 days ago [-]
I'm a fan of Google Assistant's usefulness and I generally agree with this. The Assistant craze seems more justified when you consider that companies like Google and Amazon are using it as a way to build datasets. It's a strategic reserve of data to build other things from (i.e. Google Duplex) and it doesn't matter at their scale if there isn't a vision yet, if a competitor is stockpiling transcribable voice data, they need to keep up.
atat7024 1076 days ago [-]
> The Assistant craze seems more justified when you consider that companies like Google and Amazon are using it as a way to build datasets.

Basically every new goddamn trend that is allowed to occur is about how datasets can be compiled from such marketed options.

That's why we don't have first-class convergence devices yet. It'd likely blend our home and mobile usage profiles too much.

dntrkv 1076 days ago [-]
Ignoring the fact that the research isn't only used one for one purpose, a proper assistant is hugely valuable to me.

Simple things like:

"Remind me to X tomorrow at 9am" "Add Y to the shopping list" "Remind me to do Z when I get home"

This is the only way I do reminders now and it's great. It's especially useful while driving, or when I'm in bed nearly asleep and remember something, I can just tell Siri without having to get up and use my phone.

And as far as smart home controls, being able to say "Siri, turn all the lights on" or "Siri, turn the heater on" without having to stop what I'm doing and walk around the house flicking switches is really nice.

Assistants provide a very noticeable QoL improvement for me in many aspects. I think that's more than most other products on the market can say. And that's not even touching on the lives saved from not having to use your phone while driving.

realo 1076 days ago [-]
Yes but... Siri is (to me) not there yet. Promising but not there.

Siri is unaware of so many things.

A simple command that would actually be useful (but fails totally):

« Siri, remind me to buy milk the next time I go get groceries. »

And even then... I should not have to mention the part about « groceries ». The request should be perfectly understood with a full stop after the word « milk » and a reminder should pop up automatically whenever I am in a grocery (any grocery).

An even better Siri would also be able to a categorize things properly. For example, if later in the day I say « Siri, I will need chicken, butter, salt and cardamom for my next recipe », Siri should automatically add those to the « milk » next time I go to the grocery.

Pokepokalypse 1076 days ago [-]
heh. I'll just say that Alexa rarely misses an opportunity to "remind" me when I need to buy something.
kvee 1076 days ago [-]
Anyone know why there is no longer a way to turn off all the suggestions on Alexa anymore?

I've used Alexa since it came out and they've added annoying random suggestions over the years that you were able to turn off in various settings menus.

But in the past year or Alexa has been upselling me stuff or randomly telling me about features I don't want to hear about when I'm just trying to turn on a light. And it seems like there's now actually no way to turn this stuff off.

Does anyone know if you can turn off Alexa upselling or is it going to just be a part of having a smart home forever?

everdrive 1076 days ago [-]
I'm still not very impressed by this, as it can be totally accomplished by a pad of paper and a pen.

I'm believe the most valid use of AI/ML is to perform tasks that people either cannot currently do, or cannot easily do. For example, ai-based up-scaling of old video game pre-renders. It's not really feasible for a person to do this well, unless you simply rebuild everything with a team of artists. And you could argue that up-scaling images for a video game is trivial, since all video games are trivial. But, the point is that the task at hand requires the help of a computer, whereas a to-do list, or using a light switch does not.

what_ever 1076 days ago [-]
Let's see the situations when you are setting those reminders -

1. In bed, all ready to fall asleep, you get up to get your notebook from your desk to add the reminder to your notebook.

2. Cooking with hands all messy, you wash your hands, dry them, go to your desk to add the reminder to your notebook.

3. Driving at 40mph, so you pull over in a parking lot, take out your notebook from your bag and add the reminder.

Yeah, I will take telling Google assistant to do this instead.

Balgair 1076 days ago [-]
I gotta ask, can one not just use their memory and remember to write those things down in a few minutes/the morning? I know that kinda defeats the purpose of a notebook. But, like, remembering to write down to get more garlic should not be difficult in any way. Also, if one is so perturbed at forgetting things then some other questions and areas need to be explored. If one is having difficulty remembering things this much, I fear that there are much deeper issues and possibly some quite serious health problems at play.
bobsmooth 1076 days ago [-]
Can one not just move closer to things instead of wearing glasses? Can one not just use their legs instead of driving?

Human memory is terrible and should be relied upon as infrequently as possible.

everdrive 1076 days ago [-]
1. There's nothing wrong with keeping that same notebook by your bed. Also, you might wake your spouse up by talking to Google.

2. Don't get so messy when cooking, also it hardly matters if your temporary notebook gets a bit dirty.

3. Don't multitask when driving. Taking your eyes off the road is the main concern, but testing has shown driver's voice control systems to be distracting to a significant degree. And, voice assistants are at least somewhat similar.

saemei 1076 days ago [-]
> tasks that people either cannot currently do, or cannot easily do.

A todo entry or flipping lights via assistants also qualify as such tasks, if we broaden the definition of "easy". The flow from having the thought of an idea or a song to making a note or playing the song by just speaking out loud is just so convenient, without having to context switch from whatever one is doing. Controlling a set of IoT devices with custom commands is another good usecase.

Of course, not everyone has a workflow where a digital assistant fits well today. However, I expect that their usefulness will increase exponentially with time. We're surely heading to the sci-fi future where each house will have a personalized digital guardian responding to the wishes of the family, Jarvis style, no?

6gvONxR4sf7o 1076 days ago [-]
Speech recognition goes way beyond digital assistants. Plain old transcription is super useful, especially in terms of accessibility. I was voice coding for a while because of RSI and even as immature as the tech is, it saved my ass.
neartheplain 1076 days ago [-]
What systems did you use for voice coding? I may need to use them soon for similar reasons.
6gvONxR4sf7o 1076 days ago [-]
I tried a few. Caster and talon were the best. I’d recommend talon with dragon as it’s speech engine, but apparently talon has a new built in speech engine which people like, so maybe try that engine first to save money.
neartheplain 1075 days ago [-]
Thanks! I’ll try them both out.
Firehawke 1076 days ago [-]
I'm not a full data point to work from, but I've got neuropathy and nerve damage. Side effects include severe short term memory problems (I can forget some things as quickly as 10 seconds, as frustrating as that is..) and sometimes motor control issues.

For me, speech recognition and assistants, along with software like Todoist, are able to keep me far more functional than I would be otherwise.

dalbasal 1076 days ago [-]
> this is the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine

Salty, but I think I agree.

It seems that with AI/ML, choosing/defining your problem well is hugely important. Text to speech, even computer generated natural language is a definite enough task that engineers (and machines) have the feedback to make progress.

JohnJamesRambo 1076 days ago [-]
Siri is brain-damaged. I am constantly disappointed with how stupid she is compared to Alexa and the gap is widening. I try to keep things as simple as possible with her because she always disappoints me. I wish Apple would open up a tiny bit of those 200 billion in cash reserves on improving Siri.
DrBazza 1076 days ago [-]
You clearly haven't had the pleasure of trying to use voice control in a Mercedes-Benz. It makes Siri and Cortana seem telepathic by comparison.
agotterer 1076 days ago [-]
Same with the Audi. I don’t understand why all the car companies aren’t licensing the assistant technology from the big tech companies and using it as the default.

I get Siri via car play, but even car play is sandboxed because it can’t control things like the radio or temperature.

stadium 1076 days ago [-]
The procurement decisions for the infotainment system are made around 5 years in advance of the vehicle release. The tech is obsolete before the car leaves the dealership.
gambiting 1076 days ago [-]
Because even the "big" tech from "big" companies is still shit. Have a 2020 LG TV with Google assistant built in, and it's a piece of hot garbage.

Example: I frequently switch between display profiles to suit what I need. Saying

"switch to cinema display mode" - works fine.

Saying:

"switch to user display mode" - 100% of the time results in the TV replying "which user would you like to select?".

Like...it's not my fault that the dumb TV has the custom profile named "User".

Google probably spent billions on voice recognition, but it's all worthless, because someone without an ounce of imagination just coded it to react to the words "change" and "user" as the user profile selector, the rest of the sentence be damned.

But back to cars - Google Assistant in Android Auto is equally shit. Try saying "hey google, open spotify", then "hey google, play music". 100% of the time, it switches from Spotify to Google Music. It's insane.

bombcar 1076 days ago [-]
The move to companies naming everything "Brand Name Generic Name" coincided with the move to voice assistants in the worst possible way. "iTunes" is unique but "Apple Music" is just two nouns - and we see this across so many properties.
rkalla 1076 days ago [-]
For the reason it took BMW so long to say yes to Android Auto - Amazon/Google will happily license the tech but want ALL the customer data off the car.
propogandist 1076 days ago [-]
Here's an article from a few years back, from Toyota publicly stating they won't support Android Auto due to privacy concerns[1]

It's not just Amazon/Google, car manufacturers like Hyundai are selling data to Verisk, a data broker, who in-turn sells the individuals driving data to insurance companies and other entities [2]. They get people to "opt-in" by offering people free 'connected services' which has data-sharing buried in the T&C.

I'm sure other manufacturers are also going to do similar things as this allows them to generate additional, incremental revenue from user data about their end users.

[1] https://www.motor1.com/news/239477/toyota-android-auto-priva...

[2] https://www.verisk.com/press-releases/2018/april/hyundai-joi...

propogandist 1076 days ago [-]
Few years back, and data collection techniques have only gotten more aggressive.

https://www.motor1.com/news/239477/toyota-android-auto-priva...

DrBazza 1076 days ago [-]
Android Auto at least works, and that in turn has voice recognition that works. It's completely "meta" that I have to use voice recognition on my phone to call a number that triggers bluetooth that activates the hands-free and speaker in the car.
idiotsecant 1076 days ago [-]
I would argue that in-car infotainment systems should be nothing but a dumb terminal into your phone. We already have devices with voice recognition, navigation, multimedia, etc. Why don't we have a way to just use that?
mattowen_uk 1076 days ago [-]
I've been looking for a single DIN car audio device that is nothing more than an amplifier with Bluetooth, but such a thing does not exist. My phone already does Music/Radio/Maps - all I need is the car head unit to connect to it and playback the audio through the car speakers. I've even started thinking about some sort of home built version using parts from a cheap Bluetooth speaker system (minus the actual speakers).
Pokepokalypse 1076 days ago [-]
BlueBus is nice; but it works with the stock BMW head unit (nicely supports steering wheel controls tho). It was for pre-bt-enabled BMW's but I think it's able to be adapted to all k-bus-based cars, so roughly 1998-2010?
bentcorner 1076 days ago [-]
There's plenty of old-school single DIN devices that have bluetooth in them. You'll usually find they have a radio and other junk (e.g. mp3 over usb) but most are fairly simple and it shouldn't be hard to find one that stays in bluetooth mode all the time.
mattowen_uk 1076 days ago [-]
Yes, but they all look awful! XD
DrBazza 1076 days ago [-]
I completely agree. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what happens. It's partly there already.
int_19h 1076 days ago [-]
Android Auto is pretty much that.
Alex5899 1076 days ago [-]
If manufacturers use big tech voice assistance, it'd mean extra subscription for the car owners...really sick and tired of these "subscription" thingy. Microsoft Office used to offer one-time purchase, now it isn't an option. Are we going to have everything subscription eventually?
vanderZwan 1076 days ago [-]
Have you tried speaking to it in German?

(joking aside, is that voice control developed in the US or in Germany?)

throwaway4good 1076 days ago [-]
German always works! (For cats at least.)

Seriously - my guess is that they try to perform the speech recognition client side (on the local hardware) and are less agressive on how they collect data for model training.

Unlike Google or some company in China which make thin clients that send everything to a central server where it is much easier to recognize, correct and train.

gambiting 1076 days ago [-]
Got a 2020 volvo. The voice controls are insanely bad. I can 100% reproduce a situation where saying "hey volvo, switch off the seat heating" turns it up to max.
steve_adams_86 1076 days ago [-]
Same in my Toyota. It has explicit instructions which, despite a few honest efforts, I can't seem to follow well enough for the assistant to work with any reliability. It's also painfully slow as it fails to understand, making the tumble into the pit of infotainment despair seem to happen in slow motion. Not sure how it ever hit the market.
hobonumber1 1076 days ago [-]
Is that the voice control in the MBUX, or in older Mercedes?
DrBazza 1076 days ago [-]
In every MB I've been in, in the last decade, the voice recognition could be described as "entertaining".
geodel 1076 days ago [-]
I mean I can understand how stupid siri is. I find it so irritating that I always keep it disabled. But the point that anything Apple doing bad is for the lack of spending is hilarious.

In fact I'd say Apple is just keeping spending money instead of shutting it down. When IBM Watson AI sank like turd in market it cut funding and let most of team go. I think Apple doing same might be more sensible.

defaultname 1076 days ago [-]
I think Siri is intended to be more goal oriented. I use it extensively, with very little complaint, daily-

-set alarm -next song -set timer -set reminder (e.g. "Siri set reminder 6pm close garage door") -send message to <person>

These comprise 99% of what I would want it to do, and it does it marvelously.

iamatworknow 1076 days ago [-]
Same here. I replaced the few Alexa devices in my house with Homepods over the last year and have notice no difference in how well they work because I don't use them for anything particularly complicated, and I don't _want_ to use them for any more than that. The only thing Siri seems to mess up for my usage is not interpreting things I put on my shopping list correctly, but usually in a way that's still recognizable (like "milk this'll").
Lewton 1076 days ago [-]
> I find it so irritating that I always keep it disabled.

Ah, if there only was a way to disable it fully. Even when I disable Siri, it still randomly decides to call people when I boil a pot of rice

1076 days ago [-]
dominotw 1076 days ago [-]
>she always disappoints me

siri doesnt default to female voice anymore.

eCa 1076 days ago [-]
Siri is a female name[1] so it makes sense to use ’she’ when humanizing her.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri_(given_name)

sgerenser 1076 days ago [-]
Doesn’t default to male voice either, you will have to choose. I bet most people keep it what it always was (female in the US, some countries like UK were male voices).
JustSomeNobody 1076 days ago [-]
Oh come on! That was announced like 2 weeks ago!
saagarjha 1075 days ago [-]
In a beta no less.
Cullinet 1076 days ago [-]
Lernaut & Haupsie went bankrupt in 99 holding the monopoly of every viable dictation platform and the aftermath of a enormous stock fraud that enabled management to hoover up everything at ludicrous valuations eg IBM Via Voice for something like $4BLN cash deal closed in unbelievable time, provided sufficient obfuscation and destruction to lay the sector to rest for two decades.

Microsoft is making a intervention with things purchase the way I see it.

What they have to do is provide a Linux version or at least O365 interop as good with Edge for Linux as Windows.

Nuance support and products are hopeless - my subscription for $120/yr stopped working with ios14 and the app refused to send password reset emails and then we discovered that no online account management existed and cancelled instead of relying on 8/5/300 telephone queuing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernout_%26_Hauspie

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ViaVoice

dr-detroit 1076 days ago [-]
to be fair $4 Billion in 2021 is like $6000 in 1985
Spooky23 1076 days ago [-]
Siri is a train wreck. I have a $1200 phone where it takes more time to do “hey Siri FaceTime so-and-so” than to navigate. It just sits and spins.
james_pm 1076 days ago [-]
My favourite:

"Hey Siri, make a Facetime call to Bob Smith." "Which Bob Smith would you like to call? bobsmith@icloud.com or bobsmith@me.com?

How at this point does Siri not have even the most basic of logic to know that it's literally the same person. That's Apple's OWN service.

saagarjha 1075 days ago [-]
Do you have multiple contact cards for Bob Smith?
skrowl 1076 days ago [-]
Siri is especially bad when compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, both of which are light years ahead.

Usual Apple reliance on their fans buying their devices no matter how bad the software is.

devoutsalsa 1076 days ago [-]
The thing that makes my iPhone worse is that it's hard to use Google Assistant (haven't tried Alexa) with my iPhone. I can't make Google Assistant the default voice interface. I can say "hey siri hey google", but honestly I'm not doing that. Google Assistant is decent, but it's not amazing. For any non-trivial task, I still have to do look things up manually.

And while I'm ranting... the thing I hate most of about all of these services is they don't have a profanity mode. In the privacy of my own home I have AN EFFIN' HUGE POTTY MOUTH. I love to curse. I LOVE IT. The fact that I can't get one of these services to talk to me like a middle school student is extremely disappointing. I don't want to be politically correct when I'm talking to a virtual assistant in a private setting. I want to say "Hey goognizzle, are there any good mother f***ing movies opening near me this weekend?" and get Samuel L. Jackson style "Here's the mother f***ing movies opening on mother f***ing Friday at the 5 mother f***ing theaters closest to mother f***ing you."*

Edit: TIL how to faux curse on HN. To type display "f***ing", I need to type out "f\*\*\*ing".

cletus 1076 days ago [-]
Isn’t it more likely that the quality of the voice assistant isn’t that important to most buyers?
darkwater 1076 days ago [-]
(gonna be downvoted to death) Usually Apple die-hard buyers tend to minimize the importance of software/features that are not sported by an i-device or that doesn't work well there. When the 1st iPhone was released, the lack of native apps was a selling point "we use the web standards". When apps were introduced, they were again a selling point (and still are to the present day).

The day Siri will work equal to/better than other competing systems, it will be used as a main reason for which you should buy an Apple device. The day before that, it will still be something that users actually don't want.

EDIT: and to be a bit more clear that I'm serious with this, it actually makes sense. If a feature doesn't work well, you find ways around it. And if you are used to an ecosystem, maybe you don't even know how well another ecosystem works. And finally, if that ecosystem works for you well enough - or that device - you probably really don't care about that missing feature.

temp667 1076 days ago [-]
I'm an apple buyer. Siri is terrible. Google assistant is pretty impressive. I would switch BUT - google's integration / support for things like work calendars is so terrible, and their response to consumer / user input so bad (ie, ignored despite #1 request for years and years) that I'm like most Apple users.

Apple (and Amazon) get many things right, and actually seem to pay a tiny bit of attention to user needs. So it's really not worth playing with the google stuff because you end up in these weird nonsensical hells - everything is amazing, and then they just drop the ball in a key corner.

For example, my google work calendar is EASY to integrate with Alexa along with my personal calendar. Fantastic, what's my schedule today works great. Google - falls flat on its' face for this, despite being a paying customer of their Gsuite. Their approach is just full of excuses here, and ignores that this desired interaction works well on their COMPETITORS devices but not theirs.

Just one (of many) examples. They have some sort of eventually consistent backend more often for stuff so you also get weird states that you can't delete things, changes take longer to "flow through" etc.

hnra 1076 days ago [-]
What are you getting at? Assuming bad faith, or that Apple buyers are unable to evaluate purchase decisions objectively?
darkwater 1076 days ago [-]
No, I'm saying that Apple buyers are usually satisfied with their purchase for several reasons already. One feature not working as expected is just ignored/not needed.
bentcorner 1076 days ago [-]
I think that's an effect rather than the cause.

My guess is that Apple management doesn't see voice assistants as the "next big thing" to differentiate themselves from the competition. I think VR/AR is where they are focusing and Siri is on life support.

molszanski 1076 days ago [-]
I think so too. I am pretty sure that data will show it too. Five years ago the NextGen computing platform that will change the world where smart speakers. Now it is almost a niche product.
Grimm1 1076 days ago [-]
Anecdata but I've never even bothered to try Siri on mine. I think you're on the money there.
Jcowell 1076 days ago [-]
In the flip side I use Siri everyday to turn on lights , timers , custom iOS Shortcut commands , Intercom, play music, and to find my phone when I can’t locate it I’m my house.
dijit 1076 days ago [-]
Statement about observed behaviour:

> Siri is especially bad when compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, both of which are light years ahead.

Followed by a statement about the entire ecosystem, of which only a tiny amount is Siri.

> Usual Apple reliance on their fans buying their devices no matter how bad the software is.

fastball 1076 days ago [-]
I was actually under the impression that this is because Apple actually cares about privacy (unlike the other two) and so is not hoovering up everything you say to it and sending it to the cloud, but rather trying to do as much inference as possible on your device.
NaturalPhallacy 1076 days ago [-]
ding ding ding

Apple makes money selling devices to people.

Google makes money selling people to advertisers.

As a result Apple's maps and ML assistant aren't as good as Google's which harvests way more of people's data.

I'm perfectly fine with this trade off. Lots of things iPhones do are even presented at as the data never leaving your phone at keynotes/press releases, and ads. A bullet point notably missing from Android phones. I deliberately use Apple's admittedly worse maps application whenever possible because I know it's not telling Big Brother about me when I know Google maps is.

millsmob 1076 days ago [-]
Edward Snowden revealed that Apple has been part of the PRISM electronic surveillance program since 2012.

I would agree that Apple is significantly better on user privacy than Google or Facebook but that does not mean that the NSA isn’t sucking up all your data from Apple Maps.

Claiming that Apple isn’t “telling Big Brother about me” is at best naive and at worst dangerous misinformation that could put activists and whistleblowers at risk of having their location data harvested by the US war machine.

NaturalPhallacy 1076 days ago [-]
A fair point. But it's also worth noting that Snowden recommends Signal, and doesn't say "don't use it on an iPhone" as a caveat.

To say Apple is benign is ridiculous. To say they're better on privacy than google is just true.

millsmob 1075 days ago [-]
A fair argument but I don’t think it’s really fair to compare Signal to Apple Maps because IMHO while there is a possibility that the NSA is able to somehow intercept my Signal messages on-device prior to encryption occurring; it is almost a certainty that the NSA has some form of back door access to Apple’s infrastructure and is able to access location/search data from Apple Maps.

This isn’t even really a criticism of Apple, it’s just the reality of the world that we have created since 9/11. I don’t believe any company that operates at Apple’s scale can keep its infrastructure totally private and secure from abuses of user privacy by the state. Especially if that company has infrastructure or employees in countries like the US/UK/China that are notorious for having extrajudicial/illegal/secret/unaccountable surveillance programs.

Totally agree with you on Google, they are the worst by far on user privacy. And we shouldn’t really expect anything different from a company that derives almost its entire revenue from advertising/data AND has been deeply connected to the intelligence agencies from Day 1.

TomVDB 1076 days ago [-]
I’m always surprised when people shit on Siri. I use it all the time for simple commands, and it works pretty reliably.

I’ve never used anything non-Apple nor have I used any non-phone voice assistant, so I’m not in a position to compare, but as long as it calls the people that I want, sets timers and alarms as needed, and routes me to my city of choice, why would I care?

xnyan 1076 days ago [-]
>I’m always surprised when people shit on Siri.

>I’ve never used anything non-Apple nor have I used any non-phone voice assistant

You're coming at it without experience. If you try the google and/or amazon version, you may still find Siri acceptable but I can absolutely guarantee you will not be surprised anymore when people call Siri shitty, because companied to amazon and google, it is.

c0wb0yc0d3r 1076 days ago [-]
Is it really reliance? To me it seems like they know their customers will just lay down and take it.
BoorishBears 1076 days ago [-]
I write apps for Android and design devices that run on Android for a living. A friend once asked why I have an iPhone, and my response was pretty simple:

"I'll switch to Android when I can rotate my screen animate the rotation instead of blanking out"

They got it immediately.

-

For those not familiar with Android, your app's UI is completely destroyed on every single configuration change. Rotation. Plugging in a keyboard. Dark mode.

Then the app has to redraw it's entire state from memory in the new orientation.

To do that tiny little thing I described above you'd have to design your app to disable all built in configuration handling (so now it's on you to handle swapping out every resource when a language change happens, or dark mode is turned on) then hand animate every element to its new position on every screen. Needless to say, that's not done.

It was probably very convenient when they were designing the G1 with it's 192MB of RAM, but to me it's a thing that encapsulates everything wrong with Android as a platform for me to use daily.

I wonder what percentage of daily Android crashes in the world are a direct result of this tiny decision. Or god forbid, the amount of gnashing of teeth in how to write Android apps in a "clean" way that manages with this...

(And yes, iOS has state restoration too, but it's strictly for returning from the background, so it's not nearly as intrusive)

schmuelio 1076 days ago [-]
I didn't remember how android handles screen rotations so I went and checked, I looked on both my phone and my tablet on a plethora of apps:

- YouTube

- GMail

- FireFox

- Plex

- RIF (Reddit app)

- Material (HackerNews app)

- Main home screen

- Sudoku game

All of them animated screen rotation just fine, with no blank screen or glitching. Just a smooth animation of the app screen rotating from portrait to landscape (and back).

It's possible that your assumptions are outdated and - by your own admission - should switch back to Android.

BoorishBears 1076 days ago [-]
You realize I work on Android devices all day long right?

I have 5 of them sitting in this room!

You might not notice, but I assure you, they clear the screen then fade back in. The exceptions are apps that have to handle configuration changes anyways like games or full screen video.

It's not always a janky thing, phones have gotten fast enough that the screen redraw is easily hidden behind a half rotate followed by a fade in, but the point is that the hacks are even needed in the first place.

Their approach to configuration changes just adds a massive footgun that trips up plenty of developers. The number of high profile apps with semi-permanent bugs like "I got scrolled back to the wrong part of the page when I rotated my phone!" insane.

A future without that is only coming once we get a replacement for the current UI framework in the form of Flutter or Jetpack Compose (both of which handle configuration changes in new ways)

twobitshifter 1076 days ago [-]
With limited Android experience I can corroborate the screen rotation stupidity. The latest google wisdom is to use the Model View ViewModel pattern, which can help to work around this issue. If you are using a “view model” its a hack to largely avoid this screen rotation BS, but I don’t expect many Android apps are implemented this way. Keeping up with google is like chasing your own tail.
jonas21 1076 days ago [-]
I haven't written Android code in a few years, but IIRC, there's an attribute you can add to your manifest that lets you handle the rotation without getting your UI getting destroyed and recreated. This is relatively easy to do and seems to be commonly done, at least for bigger apps.

Having worked in both Android and iOS development, I can assure you that they both have some ridiculous quirks and confusing APIs, but you eventually just learn to deal with them.

BoorishBears 1076 days ago [-]
I already covered that:

> To do that tiny little thing I described above you'd have to design your app to disable all built in configuration handling (so now it's on you to handle swapping out every resource when a language change happens, or dark mode is turned on) then hand animate every element to its new position on every screen.

That's not done in "bigger apps", it's done in apps that have large areas not rendered with normal UI elements, like games, or camera apps

I've done some iOS work too, and while iOS has its issues it "defaults" to making better apps, hands down.

It's not unlike the user side of these platforms, iOS has a more opinionated "default" than Android

Jetpack is trying to fix that but it's "not that much, extremely late"

-

But again, this is all missing the forest for the tree here, configuration changes are just a tiny part of the general "backend" choices that add up to a more powerful platform in developing for Android... but a less useable platform as a user

GekkePrutser 1076 days ago [-]
This is not much to do with the speech recognition itself, but with the AI behind interpreting the commands.

I'm indeed also a bit surprised that this hasn't progressed. It's still not possible to say things like "Turn on my living room lights and the hallway as well". It still feels very scripted where you have to say things exactly the right way and in bite-sized chunks to make it work. The same with Alexa by the way.

bombcar 1076 days ago [-]
It's insanely more frustrating because there is no standard list of commands - I'm perfectly fine saying things in the way the computer needs (what is a command line after all) but there's no reference listing what it is expecting so you just have to do trial and error to find out what works.
armagon 1076 days ago [-]
And it is different for every skill (for Alexa, anyway).

And a command that worked yesterday may not work today. (Gah!)

Jcowell 1076 days ago [-]
I would say it has progressed compared to 10 years ago. Speech technology in general to. I remember when YouTube auto captions didn’t even hit close to what was being said we now they’re way more usable.
quantumwannabe 1076 days ago [-]
I just tried that command with Google Assistant and it worked.
i_have_an_idea 1076 days ago [-]
Siri is terrible, but have you tried Google Assistant? I find it very accurate at recognizing my speech and very fast. It feels like a vastly superior product and I definitely find myself using it on my Google devices.
suddenexample 1076 days ago [-]
Google Assistant is pretty good. But Google's on-device voice transcription in GBoard (unsure if it's a Pixel exclusive) is borderline magical. The delay between speaking a word and having it appear on the screen is shockingly short.
i_have_an_idea 1076 days ago [-]
Oh yeah, the transcription is super good. I'm so sad it is crippled on iOS by requiring some weird app switching to work. Except for that part, it is super faster there too.
hn_throwaway_99 1076 days ago [-]
Yeah, came in to say this. Google Assistant has consistently gotten better year after year. I'm surprised it understands me sometimes.
kelnos 1076 days ago [-]
I don't know about Siri, but I do believe Google Home has gotten worse. My girlfriend and I mostly use it only for things like turning lights on and off, pausing/resuming the chromecast, setting timers, and asking for the weather.

I've noticed it's been misunderstanding my girlfriend more and more over the past few months (she has a slight accent to her English, but nothing remotely difficult to understand), and lately it's started misunderstanding simple things that I say too. For example if I have Netflix paused and say "hey google, resume", 30% of the time it will give me search results for how to write a résumé instead of unpausing Netflix. I've had the Google Home for a few years now, and that literally has never happened before now. To get it to work reliably, I have to instead say "resume playback" or "resume chromecast".

aquadrop 1076 days ago [-]
Youtube since recently (or I just noticed it) has very good auto-CC, their voice recognition even works in noisier videos.
technofiend 1076 days ago [-]
Google's appliance recently decided to stream Dark Piano on The Choice on Tune In when I say "OK Google, stream NPR.". Those things are so far apart I assume someone took a bribe to redirect customers for certain keywords. Lol. (Not really but it was my first thought.)

Google's online advice is whenever the assistant fails to work just retrain the device. I remain skeptical that's the issue because it's not like my way of speaking has changed. Instead I have just switched to a new way to request what I need since reporting the issue via Google's vaunted customer service process seems likely to fail.

CharlesW 1076 days ago [-]
> Is it just me or have speech recognition platforms like Siri actually gone backwards in the last few years…

I've used both Siri and Alexa daily for many years, and used to rag on Siri a lot. In my experience Siri has caught up to Alexa on most fronts, and I find them more or less interchangeable my common use cases (home automation, timers/alarms, music, news/weather summaries, etc.).

That's not saying much since the Alexa bar is quite low. But like many Apple products, I'd characterize Siri's improvements as "slow and steady" for almost a decade now.

tootie 1076 days ago [-]
You have draw a distinction between voice recognition and digital assistants. Nuance is really just the former.
racl101 1076 days ago [-]
Siri is useless for the most part. I would not depend on it for anything mission critical.
SkyPuncher 1076 days ago [-]
I've been having the same feeling with Google Assistant on Android Auto.

It feels like it does better in edge cases at the expense of the main cases.

mrkstu 1076 days ago [-]
Its been weirdly variable- my Apple Watch and the HomePod mini seem much more accurate than my iPhone.
nojito 1076 days ago [-]
Because that's not what she was designed for.

Siri is way more than a pure voice "assistant".

klausjensen 1076 days ago [-]
...so he is using it wrong?
iJohnDoe 1076 days ago [-]
Holding it wrong.
mrkramer 1076 days ago [-]
>Microsoft tried to buy TikTok's U.S. operations last year in a deal reportedly valued between $10 billion to $30 billion.

>Reports suggest it's in advanced talks with gaming chat app Discord for a deal worth more than $10 billion.

>A report in February suggested Microsoft was eyeing a takeover of Pinterest, worth $53 billion on the public market. Last September, it bought gaming giant ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion.

Microsoft is in full yolo mode since all other big tech companies have antitrust lawsuit against them. Microsoft spent its time on the cross in the 1990s and early 2000s now they will acquire anything they can.

paxys 1076 days ago [-]
The fact that none of these companies are competing with Microsoft also makes it easier. That's not the strategy Google, Facebook etc. normally use.
mrkramer 1076 days ago [-]
Maybe they are not competing with them right now but they have aspirations to break into their industry and then compete with them. They figured out it was easier to acquire them than try to build it from the ground up.
genericone 1076 days ago [-]
Easier to acquire AND easier to divest from if there are any monopoly-related/law-related issues.
mhermher 1076 days ago [-]
ZeniMax competes against XBox Studios or whatever their internal video game studio is called.
Foe 1076 days ago [-]
Since when was Skyrim a competitor to Microsoft Flight Simulator or Age of Empires?
another_kel 1076 days ago [-]
Microsoft also owns Obsidian, that recently announced Avowed[1] which looks really similar to Skyrim. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QkO8fy3tg
CivBase 1076 days ago [-]
MS's strategy as of late seems to be buying their way inyo being competitive in every market instead of dominating a few markets. I suppose this gives them a great deal of stability and allows them to develop a massive ecosystem of interconnected products and services. It's still a concerning practice... but not as obviously unethical as the monopolistic behavior displayed by other big tech companies.
mrkramer 1076 days ago [-]
This was their strategy since always or since they achieved monopoly in PC OS market which ensured them huge profits which they used to acquire competitors or to break into some industry or niche. They would push acquired product or service to millions of Windows users meaning they had huge distribution channel and scale potential.

Microsoft's first acquisition was in 1987 of Forethought Inc. or developers of what is now Microsoft PowerPoint and they bought them for only $14m. Today PowerPoint as a product and as a brand is worth billions.

bobsmooth 1076 days ago [-]
Hopefully these acquisitions wont end up like Mixer
Pokepokalypse 1076 days ago [-]
TikTok was never a serious purchase. It was a political move to throw up a smoke screen when Trump was making noise about banning them from the US.
ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
This is really, really unfortunate. One of the last on-device speech companies is being bought out and moved into Microsoft's cloud division. Expect nobody to be willing to sell you speech recognition without a cloud subscription now.
athenot 1076 days ago [-]
Nuance has grown through acquisitions. They basically bought up technologies and slapped a common name on them. But each one retained its one oddities. So you configure one product with INI-style files, another one with XML files, a module within that one is configured with text files using configuration codes... it's a royal pain in the behind.

Hopefully Microsoft will eventually unify these apis and configurations into something coherent.

brainzap 1076 days ago [-]
like they did with Azure? xD
lunixbochs 1076 days ago [-]
I'm in the on-device space, here's a recent demo of my engine for a niche use case (it also does large vocabulary dictation very well): https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1378159234861264896
ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
I'll take a look! I am still looking for the right speech recognition setup for my needs. I wrote an app that largely expects text input of the spoken command, and I'd ideally like to have hotword detection + speech recognition that can be set up to output the detected command to my own software.
lunixbochs 1076 days ago [-]
What are you building?
ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
I have been hacking on a home automation controller (that isn't particularly well written, to be honest) for a number of years, and voice is one area I do not want to have to figure out how to write myself. I am a bit concerned about having to heavily integrate with a model that requires I explicitly build sentence patterns in their software, because it'd lock me in pretty heavily to that solution.

(My wife has been using Dragon for dictation heavily lately, so that's a use-case that is intriguing to me as well, especially if today's announcement means the death of the Dragon product line in the near future.)

Godel_unicode 1076 days ago [-]
C+AI makes products that can work offline though (yes it has the words Azure and cloud, no they aren't required):

https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/with-azure-percept-microsoft-...

ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
The blog claims that it is so devices can continue to work when it's offline, not that it didn't use Azure when it was online, and also that the devices are intended to by deployed via Azure IoT Hub.

Which is to say, the blog doesn't make it sound like I can use this without an Azure subscription, even if it works offline sometimes. Whereas the Microsoft Speech SDK, I could just include the DLL files and run with it.

kkielhofner 1076 days ago [-]
Not quite "on device" but Microsoft Azure provides Speech Cognitive Services as containers that you can run in your local environment:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/sp...

I believe Google Cloud Platform has something similar available (not sure about AWS).

ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
I use desktop PCs as my "device", so hardware power isn't really an issue here, but the fact that it's still usage priced would be the big issue.
throwawaysea 1076 days ago [-]
I agree. Even though acquiring is a good strategy for Microsoft to an extent, it is also a problem to see continued consolidation. How can anyone hope to compete against these giants in the same product segments? They have unlimited cheap capital and the ability to integrate an acquired product into the rest of their products. Then there's the issue of intellectual property and continued building of patent war chests. If one of these companies copies your innovative feature, you will have no recourse to sue them because they'll be sitting on a mountain of random mundane patents. The fact that these companies can make $20B acquisitions itself feels broken from a healthy market perspective.
whimsicalism 1076 days ago [-]
On the flip side, the open source tech has gotten good enough that you can basically roll your own now.
rllearneratwork 1076 days ago [-]
plenty open-source options are available. Checkout https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo
yosito 1076 days ago [-]
Are you saying this discussion calls for some nuance?
2OEH8eoCRo0 1076 days ago [-]
You don't know their roadmap or plans for Nuance yet you attribute motive.
ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
Microsoft's focus here is pretty well known: They've retired the Windows Speech SDK almost entirely in favor of Azure services, which is where the Microsoft Speech team has moved to, and the announcement explicitly stated Microsoft is bringing this under their "Intelligent Cloud" segment.
2OEH8eoCRo0 1076 days ago [-]
They claimed two things. That this would be exclusively cloud and that nobody will sell you speech recognition without a subscription. I doubt this is all.
1076 days ago [-]
someperson 1076 days ago [-]
Several years ago I used a Nuance product named Dragon NaturallySpeaking that had speech-to-text capability and adds verbal accessibility features on Windows platforms (eg, say "Open Word", speak your document aloud, then "Close Word")

I had no idea they had enough sales to justify a $20 billion valuation. Though to be fair, Microsoft tends to acquire companies at high price tags (eg, Skype, LinkedIn, Minecraft) compared to eg, Apple's acquisition strategy of smaller technology focused companies (other than Beats headphones) like P.A. Semi and PrimeSense.

EDIT: Other comments say Nuance's patent portfolio may greatly contribute to its valuation.

ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
Bear in mind, Nuance is often the voice technology behind other companies' speech-based products too. Nuance technology originally powered Siri, for example.
qntmfred 1076 days ago [-]
Nuance itself was actually spun out of an organization called SRI (note the resemblance to the name Siri)
ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
This is incorrect. Nuance was a company that originated decades ago, SRI did build Siri, using Nuance's speech technology, but Nuance itself did not spin out of SRI.
qntmfred 1076 days ago [-]
https://www.sri.com/hoi/natural-language-speech-recognition/

> SRI spun off market leader Nuance Communications to commercialize the technology

https://hbr.org/2015/09/the-president-of-sri-ventures-on-bri...

microtherion 1076 days ago [-]
That's true, but technically, the company that is named "Nuance" today was originally named "ScanSoft". They bought the original Nuance and assumed its name.

It's a bit like Symantec, which bought everything, including its name.

Pokepokalypse 1076 days ago [-]
The main IP Nuance took away from SRI was SRI's EduSpeak.

Now: Nuance was spun off of SRI probably a decade or more before Siri was birthed in a Darpa program called CALO. CALO may have, in some implementations, used EduSpeak or it's lightweight cousin, Dynaspeak. But I'm pretty sure that when Siri was ALSO spun-off from SRI, and bought by Apple, that Apple did not want to pay the license fee for the EduSpeak code. So they used something else (which, AFAIR; was an Apple-confidential matter).

raobit 1076 days ago [-]
Is Nuance into healthcare or speech/voice recognition? Didn't knew about the Siri thing though
ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
Nuance is a speech recognition company, but due to their on-premise software which has a lot of integration options and having custom distributions for medical and legal jargon, they tend to be a go-to choice for adding voice to professional highly-regulated industry platforms.
RandallBrown 1076 days ago [-]
Yes. My wife uses Dragon for her writing her clinical notes. It's apparently pretty popular.
raobit 1076 days ago [-]
Can you link some source of nuance powering siri, i think SRI was where it was built
ocdtrekkie 1076 days ago [-]
SRI built Siri using Nuance for the speech components, and Nuance continued to be used for Siri under Apple: https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/05/apple-siri-nuance/ https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/30/nuance-confirms-i...
ghc 1076 days ago [-]
Keep in mind that the company named Nuance is a big, 30 year old public company with a lot of products, which acquired Nuance and changed its name in 2005. According to Wikipedia they did $2 Billion USD in revenue in 2016 and had $5.7 Billion in assets.
Spooky23 1076 days ago [-]
Nuance OEMs and sells backend systems for IVRs and all sorts of products. You probably interact with their stuff routinely and not even know it.

They also bought up a lot of small companies and products from bigger companies and own a lot of patents.

iudqnolq 1076 days ago [-]
Yeah, but they've got their tentacles into a lot of complicated sticky markets.

For example, they've done all the work to get that same software certified healthcare grade and convinced lots of hospitals to adopt it for their doctors. They can sell that for a lot more than they sell the essentially same software to you.

If you go to a corporate website and see an "Industries" section with Healthcare, Telecommunications, Finance, Government, and more you know they're good at this sort of rent-seeking.

udev 1076 days ago [-]
Also wasn't Siri based on Nuance technology?

If so imagine them sales...

Pokepokalypse 1076 days ago [-]
When you're talking about Siri; you need to talk about the virtual assistant piece separate from the speech recognition piece.

When Siri's ancestor was being worked on at SRI, it used a cousin of Nuance for the speech part. The PI of the virtual assistant piece of that program spun it out as a separate company, and was immediately snarfed up by Apple.

At that time, they switched speech recognition providers; but I don't know if Apple picked Nuance specifically.

raobit 1076 days ago [-]
Can you link some source of it, can't find it
newsclues 1076 days ago [-]
I think the way carmakers are going the auto industry could justify most of the valuation.
jpetso 1075 days ago [-]
Nuance spun out their automotive business into Cerence in 2019, so they presumably have zero business with carmakers right now. There should be conditions not to compete with Cerence in the automotive market.
bananaface 1075 days ago [-]
FWIW the acquisition was only 25ish percent above market value. In the public markets Nuance was worth something like $15 billion.
varispeed 1076 days ago [-]
So Microsoft can see your private repositories, your documents if you use Office, your personal files (one drive), your company communication (teams), now they will be able to listen what you talk about. Where is this going? Should we trust this company so much? I think companies like this should be split up.
mikro2nd 1076 days ago [-]
Years ago, deep in the fine-print of the Skype ToU, was buried a clause in which anything you discussed via Skype granted to MS a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, etc. license to anything mentioned. Is that still there? (Haven't used Skype in many a long year, myself.) I always wondered why that clause didn't render Skype unusable for any business or prospective business conversation.
1123581321 1076 days ago [-]
No, that is standard language that gives a website the right to store and display content you post to it (e.g., to show your avatar on a profile page or show forum posts or chats.) Many websites use it; see this search for examples: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22any%20time%20you%20...

This is the text from Skype’s terms: “Notwithstanding any rights or obligations governed by the Additional Terms (as defined below) if, at any time you choose to upload or post User Submissions to the Skype Websites or through the Software (excluding Reports and excluding the content of your communications) you automatically grant Skype a non-exclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, sub-licensable and transferable license of all rights to use, edit, modify, include, incorporate, adapt, record, publicly perform, display, transmit and reproduce the User Submissions including, without limitation, all trade marks associated therewith, in connection with the Skype Websites and Skype’s Software and Products including for the purpose of promoting or redistributing part or all of the Skype Websites and/or the Software or Products, in any and all media now known or hereafter devised. You also hereby grant each user of the Skype Website and/or Skype’s Software or Products a non-exclusive license to access your User Submission through the Skype Website and/or Software or Products and to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, perform and transmit such User Submissions solely as permitted through the functionality of the Skype Websites and/or Software or Products and pursuant to these Terms of Use. In addition, you waive any so-called “moral rights” in and to the User Submissions, to the extent permitted by applicable law.”

marcosdumay 1076 days ago [-]
So, those are both necessary terms due to the US asinine idea that copying data within a system is covered by copyrights, and general enough terms that allow MS to do anything they want with any content you send through Skype.

I don't see how the GP is incorrect. But I also don't see how MS could improve anything here.

1123581321 1076 days ago [-]
I'm sure Microsoft could survive a court challenge. That is not the same as saying getting agreement on this has no value to them.

The user was incorrect because they said, "anything you discussed via Skype granted to MS a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, etc. license to anything mentioned" in the context of their parent comment that said, "now they will be able to listen what you talk about. Where is this going?" These terms have nothing to do with listening to your conversations and they don't grant any rights to them.

That's not to say Microsoft won't ask for such licensing in the future.

kyberias 1076 days ago [-]
I find that very hard to believe.
habeebtc 1076 days ago [-]
There was 2 Skypes. Skype and Skype for business.

I can believe this ToU for the former.

sbr464 1076 days ago [-]
It’s there for OneDrive still.
AshamedCaptain 1076 days ago [-]
And the worst part, the deal is likely going to be approved (or they would not be announcing it). There's just _no way in hell_ the current political landscape allows "splitting up" a company when it is still allowing to grow it even further.
1076 days ago [-]
kmfrk 1076 days ago [-]
They also want a piece of Discord, so that's most private group conversations along with the voice chats.
severino 1076 days ago [-]
Well, they have been doing that for ages already, remember they hold a monopoly on the personal computer operating system software. Of course now it isn't as easy as it used to be as they couldn't just force IE and Bing into everybody's phone, but they're working on it.
3v1n0 1076 days ago [-]
I agree, not that different from Google either.
andrew_v4 1076 days ago [-]
One difference I've found between MS and Google: MS is much more annoying about everything they do. (Hear me out)

I'd be surprised if there is any real difference in how either company respects your privacy (neither does). But for the most part, google seems to do its thing in the background and leave you alone. Microsoft is constantly popping things up asking you to rate this or that, flinging things you didn't ask for onto your screen, basically the spirit of clippy reborn into modern data collection practices. If I'm going to have my information exploited no matter what I do, I'd rather at least have it happen unobtrusively.

(To be fair, this is just my perception. I was in a g-suite shop for three years and now onto office 365 and I feel like it bothers me about stuff way more often the g-suite ever did)

twobitshifter 1076 days ago [-]
Microsoft is annoying while Google is creepy. I’m annoyed by the dark pattern designs used by Microsoft, but Google will remember things that you about yourself that you didn’t at moments when you didn’t ask for help. It’s creepy because you’d rather not know that a company has that amount of data on your life.
astrea 1076 days ago [-]
But Microsoft won't see as much scrutiny as any other tech giant because they are so deeply ingrained in the government's world.
berkes 1076 days ago [-]
And when they are scrutinized, that most probably puts the scrutinizers themselves in a difficult position.

The report in which the organization explains why Microsofts products are privacy invading, monopolized or otherwise breaching some law or regulation, that report itself is most probably written on those Microsoft products.

aloisdg 1076 days ago [-]
Or Amazon
3v1n0 1076 days ago [-]
Well amazon can't be neither compared in this, is by far way more evil. At least Google and MS keep some key products open source, so most of them can be checked and re-packaged if there are privacy concerns.
newbie578 1076 days ago [-]
I'm just curious, do you and the people who agree with you think that Apple should also be split up?

I personally am more Microsoft friendly, simply for the reason that they always had and have an open platform to everyone.

I'm honestly interested in people's experiences and views on this topic.

anotherman554 1076 days ago [-]
They did not always have an open platform. Windows Phone was was a Apple style walled garden and Windows 8 did not allow applications outside the windows store to use the "modern" user interface.

The only reason Microsoft is trending back to "open" is they failed when they imitated Apple.

zentiggr 1076 days ago [-]
An open platform to everyone...

Apparently you missed a few decades of their development of the "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactics.

As well as their tendency to throw exorbitant licensing conditions on nearly everything they sold.

As well as their repeated backdoor deals and maneuvers to cause vendor lock in across the entire PC market.

sjg007 1076 days ago [-]
Nuance is text to speech in hospitals, government, call centers etc.. This is a market access play.
2ion 1076 days ago [-]
Buy the stock and enjoy the ride.
zentiggr 1076 days ago [-]
So you've seen the move "The Circle"? Complete transparency for everyone then?
2ion 1074 days ago [-]
Personally I think that given current policies an "Umbrella Corp" that does everything is unavoidable. The question is, will I be able to profit through it?
alberth 1076 days ago [-]
This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26774367

Note: everyone is getting this acquisition wrong. It's not about Dragon and their Speech-to-Tex. This is all about owning an enterprise Communication Platform (e.g. Contact Center, etc).

I'll repost my previous comment from the other HN thread below:

----

Everyone is wanting to take on Twilio. Last September, Microsoft first announced their Communication Cloud.

A huge focus at Twilio now is moving upstream to the Call Center, where Nuance is a significant player. So Microsoft picking up Nuance makes sense.

It’s clear Microsoft sees communication services as a strategic core part of their business.

(Even at the consumer / gamer level with the rumored Discord acquisition talks)

https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/22/microsoft-challenges-twili...

ignoramous 1076 days ago [-]
> Everyone is wanting to take on Twilio.

Well then we can expect Microsoft to swoop in for Twilio any year now.

alberth 1076 days ago [-]
Given that TWLO market cap is $62B at the moment I wrote this comment, and Microsoft would have to pay a premium over that current valuation, I doubt they have the stomach to purchase someone for $70+ billion.

And given that Jeff Lawson, is both he founder and CEO of TWLO - it's not entirely clear he would sell (unless the number is just so high, he has the fiduciary requirement that he has too - in which case I assume that would be north of $100B+)

Marciplan 1076 days ago [-]
I am likely very dense but —- at what point does a (public) company have the fudiciary requirement to sell the company? I mean, I believe you, but I’m curious when that becomes the requirement :)
ignoramous 1076 days ago [-]
I'd presume $2T in MarketCap could buy you multiple Twilios even at $100B.

MSFT isn't shy from making large purchases unlike Amazon and Apple: They take such massive bets comparatively frequently.

itsbits 1076 days ago [-]
GitHub at 7.5 billion around 2019 looks like a steal.. weird other software giants didn't try for it..
v7p1Qbt1im 1076 days ago [-]
100% they tried. Can‘t imagine Google and Amazon not wanting GitHub.

But with regards to big acquisitions, MS is ironically and quite surprisingly able to fly under the radar in terms of antitrust. Literally every other tech company is not.

sethhochberg 1076 days ago [-]
I'd guess its a bit less irony and more that by virtue of having already been through various high-profile antitrust investigations, MS is somewhat uniquely well positioned to understand how to avoid/manage similar scrutiny in the future.
intricatedetail 1076 days ago [-]
Microsoft can see a lot of data which means they can have plenty of dirt on people involved in anti trust stuff. Beyond certain point companies can do what they want.
CuriousPerson23 1076 days ago [-]
A lot of the giant companies are really concerned about anti-trust. Microsoft is under pressure too, but there would be an uproar if Google or Apple bought given their pressure around the app store. Having access to the code that writes the apps would be tough to pull off...
itsbits 1076 days ago [-]
true...Google does have similar product which surely could have caused more anti trust uproar..MS in this space luckily doesn't have such issues..
aloisdg 1076 days ago [-]
True GitHub is where the community is.
Zigurd 1076 days ago [-]
I am surprised at the amount of mention Dragon is getting here. It has been a long, and at times tragic road. I worked at a company that used Dragon's technology in a voice control product for the original Macintosh. Mostly, I worked on a Windows version for a multimedia architecture Intel was developing, which entailed the acquisition of Spectron for a DSP OS.

I got to meet a lot of the people involved at other companies in the project, including the Jim and Janet Baker, who founded Dragon, and many people at Intel up to and including Andy Grove. It was remarkable that he took interest in what was a relatively small project that was also distant from Intel's core products. I also met Jo Lernout, the L in L&H, which played a role in subsequent tragic events for the Bakers.

All those people, and most of the technologies from those days, are gone now. Dragon ended up a part of Nuance, which itself had been called ScanSoft, and, before that, was a part of Xerox that, if I recall correctly, was acquired by Xerox from Ray Kurzweil.

ScanSoft became a roll-up of a large number of speech technology companies. One of them was Nuance, and the roll-up was rebranded Nuance. Another acquisition was L&H, which had collapsed due to a financial scandal, which blew up after L&H had acquired Dragon. The Bakers got screwed and sued Goldman, who did the L&H deal. They lost.

And that is your capsule history of Nuance. Sorry to give short shrift to the acquired companies I have no firsthand knowledge of.

I believe the real story of Microsoft buying Nuance is that Nuance owns an enormous number of patents.

GekkePrutser 1076 days ago [-]
Oh this is big, Nuance is not very well known to the public but they are indeed very big in speech recognition. We used their solution with automated support systems.
raobit 1076 days ago [-]
True, i came to know people appreciating it here that it is better than siri,alexa in terms of speech recognition, is it really that good. Support system you mean IVR?
CivBase 1076 days ago [-]
Speech recognition in consumer electronics continues to be slow, unreliable, and a privacy nightmare. I can't tell you the last time I saw someone use it seriously. There are reasonable applications for it, but they are few and far between. I wonder what makes it worth $20B to MS.

Top comment as I'm writing this says Nuance has a strong presence in the healthcare device market, but I'd be surprised if that alone was worth the purchase price.

outside1234 1076 days ago [-]
Talking to Hololens?
makhmedov 1076 days ago [-]
I think GitHub got better since the acquisition.
m12k 1076 days ago [-]
And LinkedIn is still terrible, but no more so than they were before the acquisition. Then again Skype just got worse and worse and Wunderlist just got absorbed by the borg cube. So a mixed record, but at least seems to have been getting better in more recent times.
nicbou 1076 days ago [-]
Wunderlist was killed off before Microsoft ToDo achieved feature parity. The web version wouldn't reliably let me log in. After a few months I switched to Todoist and never looked back.
imdsm 1076 days ago [-]
I must disagree. From a UX side alone, they've regressed, but then there have been more outages since the acquisition than before.
globular-toast 1076 days ago [-]
Got any specifics to back up that feeling?
Scharkenberg 1076 days ago [-]
Free private repos? Dark themes? The ability to use your Github account to log into other Microsoft places?
globular-toast 1076 days ago [-]
Why are you asking me?
rvz 1076 days ago [-]
easton 1076 days ago [-]
Isn’t GitHub still in AWS though? Seems like they’ve just been pushing buggier software lately, perhaps that’s an effect of being under Microsoft but it also might just be an effect of growing faster.
struct 1076 days ago [-]
What does Microsoft get out of this? They already have TTS and deep learning transcription, what technical capabilities does Nuance have that they don't have already (or can't develop for substantially less than $20B?)
bitwize 1076 days ago [-]
Probably a crapton of patents for voice recognition.

Also, if you cannot operate a keyboard and must communicate by speech to operate a computer, it's pretty much Dragon NaturallySpeaking or GTFO. Integrating NaturallySpeaking tech into Windows would be a huge boon and further cement Windows as the os to have if you have disabilities.

lunixbochs 1076 days ago [-]
I have users who have intentionally switched their speech engine from the latest version of Dragon to Talon, for both dictation and commands. Talon is cross platform and directly targets accessibility use cases (far more than just speech input).
6gvONxR4sf7o 1076 days ago [-]
I switched from dragon to talon a while back... and then back to dragon :-\ Not to bash though. You've built a great product!
lunixbochs 1076 days ago [-]
I'm specifically talking about the new Conformer model, available in early access as of ten days ago. What you tried was likely the previous (circa 2018) model, which is much less accurate than Conformer.

This is a demo of Conformer in Talon: https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1378159234861264896

6gvONxR4sf7o 1076 days ago [-]
Oh cool! Yeah I was using whatever the beta model was in December or so.
raobit 1076 days ago [-]
Is it slowly going to turn towards like the OS in movie 'Her', how much of it is really possible?
radicalbyte 1076 days ago [-]
Nuance are absolutely miles ahead of the competition the second you're looking any other language than English.
Nimitz14 1076 days ago [-]
I don't think this is accurate (and I work in this field).
eghad 1076 days ago [-]
And what do you suggest is better? I've worked with nearly every tool (open source and closed) under the sun in medical, industrial, and personal settings and Dragon NaturallySpeaking/Professional was by far the best in terms of accuracy regardless of prosody, accent, background noise, technical terms used, etc.

Personally I think they should've been acquired a decade ago.

Nimitz14 1076 days ago [-]
That answer depends on the language and on your use case. It seems like you're asking about desktop apps, but my parent was not talking in that context. Indeed there's not a lot of choice there because there's no money in it.
eghad 1076 days ago [-]
I'm even talking vs custom trained models with Kaldi (was working on a startup that was trying to create lessons for public speaking so we could grab enough data to tackle accent remediation/help those with aphasic speech disorders) and again just reiterating, the out of the box performance of Nuance's products are just better than anything else.

Obviously Nuance is more than just speech recognition, but still not sure why people are downplaying how good they were at it.

EDIT: or maybe it's just too prohibitively expensive for people outside of medical/legal fields to know about? And don't get me wrong, I love that things like Talon Voice are widely available for hands free coding, I just hope this means NaturallySpeaking will supplant Windows Dictation.

Nimitz14 1076 days ago [-]
If you have the data and a specific domain you can focus on then building a custom model [with kaldi] should always win. That's what I've done in the past (beating google, nuance etc.). You most likely didn't have the data and/or didn't know kaldi well.

> Obviously Nuance is more than just speech recognition, but still not sure why people are downplaying how good they were at it.

Because nuance wasn't very good.. at least in all the benchmarks I've seen. It's been a while since I compared numbers it's possible they've improved a lot. They're also known for kinda being dicks with the contracts they offer in B2B.

radicalbyte 1076 days ago [-]
I've used it in medical in a multi-lingual setting and there it's basically the only game in town.
raobit 1076 days ago [-]
Where do you think dragon is used to its maximum efficiency as compared to siri,alexa in places of home automation and other menial tasks
seibelj 1076 days ago [-]
Nuance owns a ton of patents and are extremely litigious.
1076 days ago [-]
somethingAlex 1076 days ago [-]
I'm not super deep into the world to NLP, but from what I have kept up with, it seems that the state-of-the-art is almost constantly open-sourced. I understand certain companies have personal relationships already built which may be what MS is after more so than the IP, but isn't there a "canonical" way of building a, for example, speech to text system for your phone?

Is there really a lot of NLP IP hidden behind corporate walls at this point? I just assumed Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, etc were all using the same model architectures. Genuine question, can anyone shed some light?

6gvONxR4sf7o 1076 days ago [-]
I recently went through a ton of speech to text engines to test them. There are a lot of open source research projects as well as paid products, including amazon and google's paid products, which I assumed would be paying for the best of the best. Dragon (nuance's products) blew them out of the water in my experience. I was very surprised. Sentence error rate is still pretty shit across the board, so tiny improvements still make a massive difference in usability.
ionwake 1076 days ago [-]
There is only one English "conversational" voice that I see ( which seems to be the best).

Is there a way to make the others "conversational" if not, is Zoe the best example?

Did you find any competing product that came close?

Thank you

6gvONxR4sf7o 1076 days ago [-]
I’m referring to the speech to text product. What’s the Zoe thing?
ionwake 1074 days ago [-]
Oh its one of the TTS voices
raobit 1076 days ago [-]
is Dragon really used in large scale enterprise, unlike siri,alexa for home automation, but i am hearing dragon let alone nuance famous for its AI product for the first time
gogopuppygogo 1076 days ago [-]
The hardest part of running a 10 mile marathon for most people is the last mile.

Lots of amazing open source out there but the difference between 90% accuracy and 99.7% accuracy can be very difficult to obtain.

Not to mention, quantified data sets, especially medical ones, can hold immense value.

iudqnolq 1076 days ago [-]
Absolutely. Take a look at [this list][gov-uk-list] of free alternatives to Dragon. The only good free alternatives they list are the closed source ones built-in to Windows and Mac. Or have a look at [this announcement][nvda-announcement] touting open-source work to integrate closed-source voice recognition engines with an otherwise open-source piece of accessibility software.

gov-uk-list: https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2018/09/27/assistive-techn...

nvda-announcement: https://www.afb.org/aw/19/4/15104

yelloo 1076 days ago [-]
a little over a decade ago i contracted for nuance working on a speech-to-text project for cell phone voicemail, either att or verizon. the job was literally listening to actual customers' voicemails and transcribing them (or correcting auto-transcriptions) into the system. literally 6 to 8 hour shifts of pure mind numbing work. we were told nothing about the tech behind it but I wonder if any of that work compounded into some of their in-use tech today, or if it was all just throw away.

pointless story aside, their enterprise valuation at the time was a little under 20% of what it is today, and the company remained mostly the same until 2 years ago. wonder what the catalyst was for their 5x valuation growth?

raobit 1076 days ago [-]
Kind of data cleaning , any idea what the tech was?
achow 1076 days ago [-]
This is incredible for a company like Nuance.

At the time of acquisition:

Nuance: $20B, employee strength 6000. 3M/employee

LinkedIn: 26B, employee strength ~12000. 2M/employee

LinkedIn was much more larger, more 'visible' and perhaps better talent attractor than Nuance at the time of acquisition.

eagsalazar2 1076 days ago [-]
I interviewed there about 10 years ago. An interviewer actually asked me "how will you deal with constantly going to pointless meetings and politics ruining any hope of actually getting anything meaningful done here?" Lol.
serf 1076 days ago [-]
Whenever I think of Dragon I always remember the early versions (90s?) I used to have to use that required 1 or 2 hours of speech training.

It felt weird reading 'Moby Dick' to a computer for an hour , but at the time there was no product that could even get near Dragon in any performance metric.

Since natural language interpretation is such a widely used concept now I had taken it for granted that Dragon even existed anymore.

I don't know much about the company, and I don't know much about the product anymore, but that kind of persistence and consistency in this field is admirable.

mwambua 1076 days ago [-]
$NUAN's spike from $45 on Friday makes sense. However, I'm having trouble figuring out why they currently trade at ~$53 given that the market knows that Microsoft will pay $56 for each share. (https://news.microsoft.com/2021/04/12/microsoft-accelerates-...)

Any ideas on why that is?

johncoogan 1076 days ago [-]
Pricing in a small chance that the acquisition won't go through (maybe due to FTC clearance, but could be other due diligence related items).
adler0901 1076 days ago [-]
Hopefully they'll fix Nuance's terrible website and support.
glutamate 1076 days ago [-]
Hopefully they will fix a couple of bugs in Dragon as well. I really would like them to have a release focused on bug fixes rather than greater accuracy
mkl 1076 days ago [-]
More than a couple. It's the most unstable and unreliable program I use on a regular basis.
pc86 1076 days ago [-]
Are the bugs ML-related or with the app more generally? I've never used Dragon but I'm pretty interested in the TTS space.
glutamate 1076 days ago [-]
Feels like the app, you often have to restart it, highly variable (by orders of magnitude) latency, sometimes won't start at all
6gvONxR4sf7o 1076 days ago [-]
If they got around to improving the python hooks too, that'd be pretty fantastic.
qwertox 1076 days ago [-]
I knew Nuance sounded very familiar, but when I googled it, the news were about an AI company, which confused me.

DragonDictate / Dragon NaturallySpeaking, that's why it sounded so familiar.

endisneigh 1076 days ago [-]
One thing I considered doing long ago was creating middleware to use NaturallySpeaking via an API and noticed in their license agreement they have the following:

   A license for the Software
   Package does not allow Licensee to use the Software 
   Package on a
   server.
I'm curious how well this would hold up in a court. I only mention this because Nuance is a pretty litigious organization. I imagine they were bought pretty much for the patents.
tonyedgecombe 1076 days ago [-]
That seems quite common, I looked at a few PDF products a couple of years ago and they all wanted to license server installations individually whereas for workstations they are happy to offer a redistribution license.
1076 days ago [-]
unfocused 1076 days ago [-]
We only buy Nuance Dragon Naturally speaking for our lawyers. It’s the best product out there. So maybe they want the Dragon technology.
josefresco 1076 days ago [-]
In other news, how did Pinterest go from $11B to $53 billion in roughly the last year? COVID-19 bump or something else?
reducesuffering 1076 days ago [-]
They really turned on monetization and the entire market was discounted 33% last year.

Pinterest went from ~$250m revenue / quarter to tripling that in just 2 quarters. That's huge and unexpected that revenue would climb that high.

sam_goody 1076 days ago [-]
What will this mean for Apple? Aside for Siri, Nuance voice is used for the Mac TTS engine, which I use quite heavily.

In English, there are quite a few contenders for TTS, eg. Amazon. Apple can find another vendor. But in some languages it is Google voice or Nuance and there are no other games in town.

ncmncm 1076 days ago [-]
Can I just say here that these all-cash transactions really suck?

Here you have been carefully exercising your stock options every month so you can pay only long-term capital gains taxes, and avoid AMT, and then BAM! sorry, you just sold it all at once. "BZZZT. Sucker."

killjoywashere 1076 days ago [-]
Am I the only doc who despises Nuance? Dragon is definitely Microsoft-style software: lots of exposed features with defaults randomly set to "what no one would want, ever". Nevermind the core algorithm never really seemed to work well for me.
Maven911 1076 days ago [-]
For those wondering some of Nuance strengths in speech: Multiple award winning Very domain oriented and not just general speech Supports many languages

They have also had a boost in stock with covid and more people using remote speech services

1076 days ago [-]
bjt2n3904 1076 days ago [-]
What does an all cash deal of $20bn look like? I'm assuming it's really just an ACH transaction or something? There's not a convoy of armored cars with silver briefcases or anything... Is there?
aembleton 1076 days ago [-]
It means that Microsoft are giving money in exchange for shares of Nuance instead of giving Microsoft Stock in exchange for Nuance Stock.
geewee 1076 days ago [-]
After having tried Microsoft's automatic captioning on Microsoft Stream which is akin in accuracy to monkeys typing something random on a typewriter, I think this seems like a good choice.
nradov 1076 days ago [-]
Live captioning in Microsoft Teams isn't terrible.
yalogin 1076 days ago [-]
I am confused how speech recognition tech is worth 20 billion. It’s not even on the most popular platforms like iPhone, android or the desktops even. Can someone shed some light on this?
ignoramous 1076 days ago [-]
ghc 1076 days ago [-]
> September 15, 2005 — ScanSoft acquired and merged with Nuance Communications, of Menlo Park, California, for $221 million.

> October 18, 2005 — the company changed its name to Nuance Communications, Inc.

So Nuance was worth ~$220MM at the time of acquisition. I'm sure it's worth a lot more now but ScanSoft acquired like 50 other companies too, including old voice recording giant Dictaphone.

Firehawke 1076 days ago [-]
Is it too early for me to be hoping that Microsoft will integrate Dragon into Windows and make the voice recognition actually work well?
lhousa 1076 days ago [-]
Off topic but axios looks neat and tidy! I could read news every day. Is there anything similar that covers worldwide news?
xyst 1076 days ago [-]
In the next decade, there will only be 3-4 companies that own everything tech. We will only have the illusion of choice
dmingod666 1076 days ago [-]
I remember using Dragon NaturallySpeaking on a windows98 machine - it was considered pretty good even back then..
Kye 1076 days ago [-]
People tell me I'm blunt sometimes but have you tried to price nuance lately? Doesn't come cheap.
rvz 1076 days ago [-]
Now Nuance.

It seems Microsoft is still actively continuing to buy more companies and it seems Discord is still on the menu.

traveler01 1076 days ago [-]
It's actually kinda scary to see Microsoft stretching its tentacles like this. Only this year they bought Bethesda, Nuance and there are rumours about them buying Discord and other gaming studios.

Microsoft's influence is growing deeply...

tupac_speedrap 1076 days ago [-]
Where is the antitrust lawsuit?

Microsoft got done for this before (bundling Internet Explorer with Windows) and if you look at where they are now buying out businesses and using dark patterns in Windows 10 to make people use Edge as well as implying it is a fundamental part of the OS they are way beyond was acceptable years ago.

traveler01 1076 days ago [-]
You're right.

They've been abusing their position and power for years now and the Edge situation with Windows 10 is getting much worse after the Chromium update. They force you to use the said browser with some features, like when you use the search function it automatically opens Edge browser, even if you have another browser set as default. What's next? Removing the option to set defaults for browsers?

It's one of the reasons I'm willing to buy a MacBook next...

reducesuffering 1076 days ago [-]
They're looking at ~$50B / yr in profit, only about ~$17B that's paid out in dividends. What else are they going to do with $33B every year?
GekkePrutser 1076 days ago [-]
And Ubuntu! Totally expecting that in the news at this point.
traveler01 1076 days ago [-]
Really hope not, Ubuntu is like a beacon in the Linux world, no matter if you like it or not. Microsoft purchasing Ubuntu would mean the end of Linux desktop...
GekkePrutser 1075 days ago [-]
I don't know, I wouldn't welcome it either that's for sure. But the github acquisition went pretty OK so far. I don't think it will be disastrous.

I'm referring to the various overtures between MS and Canonical lately, a lot of collaboration going on. https://pulse.microsoft.com/en/transform-en/na/fa2-canonical...

I don't think it would be the end of desktop Linux but it would mean a focus away from the core principles of Linux (which Canonical was not really that good at following anyway).

traveler01 1075 days ago [-]
Considering those collaborations with Microsoft, I've seen some reports of Microsoft wanting to change Windows so it's based on the Linux Kernel. Seems like a long shot but...
tatersolid 1073 days ago [-]
The kernel is not the problem with Windows. Arguably the NT kernel is better in design and cleaner in implementation than Linux.

The issue with Windows is 30+ years of legacy cruft and APIs that are all bundled in, mostly in user-space. Needed for backward compatibility which how Microsoft won and keeps the “enterprise” market.

CivBase 1076 days ago [-]
I was about to say RHEL would be more in their wheelhouse, but then I remembered that ship has already sailed.
1076 days ago [-]
msie 1076 days ago [-]
I'm shocked at the value of Pinterest (53 billon?).
jonplackett 1076 days ago [-]
> The Burlington, Massachusetts-based company, for example, powered the speech recognition engine behind Apple's voice assistant, Siri.

That is the last speech recognition engine I would ever want to buy.

f0rklift 1076 days ago [-]
Great buy for MSFT. Voice is the future of healthcare and they just bought the best player in the game.
idclip 1076 days ago [-]
Rip.
drewda 1076 days ago [-]
FWIW, I thought Google had pouched all of Nuance's key technical staff years ago.
qwertywert_ 1076 days ago [-]
Jesus, can't companies just be the company they are y'know.
tinus_hn 1076 days ago [-]
So unfair that you are forced with your arms twisted behind your back to spend that much money on such a terrible device! What a gyp!
pinko 1076 days ago [-]
You may not realize, but "gyp" is a bigoted ethnic slur. Please don't use it here or anywhere.
thedevelopnik 1076 days ago [-]
Yeah this is good to call out. A couple years ago I used it and got dogpiled for racism and I had to say “ok, I will stop using it, but who am I being racist against?” And I got educated, which was good, because I did not know it is a slur against Roma.

A lot of people use it without knowledge of context, so adding the context is important.

ArcturianDeath 1076 days ago [-]
So you flagged their comment for something you aint and that wasnt directed at anyone? How infantile. Now, no one knows what they said.
bsean95531 1076 days ago [-]
Well my comment is I would like to have all information on my account send to my new address Sean Brennan 100 elk valley rd. # 15 Crescent city Ca.95531 U.S.A. cell 1+(707)218-4485 email/ sbrennan716526@gmail.com/ sjb95531@gmail.com/brennansean95531@gmail.com thank you Sean Joseph Brennan
tapper 1076 days ago [-]
Plenty of blind people would get behind this if it happened. https://t.co/vQIch9PLiW The skype thing was a clusterfuck. I loved skype casts and they fucked it all. Discorde is OK now, but dam does it make me feel old. I join a server and join a VC and here a bunch of 13 year olds. I have to leave because I am 38 and it's creepy to be talking to 13 14 yearolds on the internets at my age lol I made a server for tech nerds and people who like OpenWrt. https://discord.gg/KuNhWzvp5S.
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