Google Opens its Digital Assistant to Developers in Race Against Amazon's Alexa - Bloomberg

Check Start building Actions on Google (Google Developers Blog) for details

"Douglas stressed that the strategy for integrating services is different than standard operations for mobile apps and the desktop web. "It's a conversational experience," he said. "It's a pretty new ecosystem."

Not entirely new. Amazon has rolled out a similar feature with Alexa, its own virtual assistant, called skills, which links to external apps and services. Alexa works primarily with Amazon's Echo speakers, which compete with Google Home. Thus far, Amazon has created more than 5,000 skills with partners ranging from Domino's Pizza to ride-hailing service Uber. 

Douglas said Google's Conversation Actions are different from Amazon's approach. Rather than picking and setting up skills manually, as Echo owners do, Google imagines its users conjuring any use case with a verbal command -- as long as a developer has built it and claimed the relevant phrase."

Google Opens its Digital Assistant to Developers in Race Against Amazon's Alexa - Bloomberg