The search giant Google believes that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the future of computing. On March 23rd, 2016, the company announced a new machine learning platform for developers at its NEXT Google Cloud Platform user conference in San Francisco.
During his keynote speech, Google's (Alphabet) chairman Eric Schmidt believes machine learning is "what's next." With the platform, Google is allowing developers to use some of its machine learning algorithms. Initially, the service is available in limited preview.
"Major Google applications use Cloud Machine Learning, including Photos (image search), the Google app (voice search), Translate and Inbox (Smart Reply)," said Google. "Our platform is now available as a cloud service to bring unmatched scale and speed to your business applications."
"It provides access to the same technologies [...] as easy to use REST APIs."
Basically, Google's Cloud Machine Learning platform consists of two parts: the first allows developers to build machine learning models from their own data, and the second offers developers a pre-trained model.
The two can help developers to train their software by using machine learning models. And because the method would take a huge computing power, Google is also allowing developers to take their data from tools like Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Dataproc, Google Cloud Storage, Google Cloud Datalab. Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark service.
And as for reporting and visualization, Google has announced Data Studio 360 which allows developers to "unify all analytics workflows into one tool."
"Cloud Machine Learning will take care of everything from data ingestion through to prediction," Google said. "The result: now any application can take advantage of the same deep learning techniques that power many of Google's services."
As for the pre-trained models, Google includes existing APIs like the ones used on its Google Translate API and Cloud Vision API, as well as new services like the Google Cloud Speech API which powers its own voice search and voice-enabled apps (able to do speech-to-text conversion for 80+ languages).
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With Google allowing developers to use its resources, developers will have the opportunity to bake Google's translation, photo and speech recognition APIs straight into their own apps by utilizing Google's Cloud Machine Learning platform.
Here, Google is following other major companies that previously had introduced their machine learning platform, following in the footsteps of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services who launched their own platforms in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
The move is part of a widespread shift in the tech industry towards deep learning, a form of AI that allows machines to learn tasks by analyzing huge amounts of data. Companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter have also made huge roles in the field, and many are sharing their technologies with others.
With many tech companies from big to small are pushing themselves forward with machine learning, We're seeking for smarter and more reliable apps in days to come.
During a lengthy keynote speech, Google highlighted its entire suite of cloud services. The new machine learning platform being initially in limited preview, Google stressed that it wants to bring the technology it developed internally to developers and make it as easy to use as possible. Previously, Google also had open-sourced its tools like Tensorflow to allow the community to take its internal tools, adapt them for their own uses, and improve them.
Ready And Well-Prepared
Google's move is in line with its enormous attempt to grab a bigger share from cloud computing market. The market will worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the close future, but at the moment, Google is still way behind from Amazon. In fact, the retail giant has a larger and more superior stronghold in the industry, surpassing Google, Microsoft and all other players.
Here, Google is helped with its technological expertise that is undeniable. Its machine learning technology for example, is ahead of the market. With the machine learning platform for developers in its cloud, Google wants more people to use its service, while at the same time, leverage AI potential by open-sourcing it.
To help it accomplish the goal in prioritizing cloud computing, the company has hired former VMware CEO Diane Greene to run its cloud group.
"It has become clear that the public cloud is the way of the future," Google engineer Urs Hölzle once said. "One day, this could be bigger than ads. Certainly, in terms of market potential, it is."