Google's digital assistant comes to new Android phones

Google announced on Sunday that it will bring its digital assistant to smartphones running the latest versions of its Android operating system.

The Google Assistant was limited to the technology company's own products when it was released last year but it has steadily been expanding to a broader range of devices.

The Google Assistant will roll out this week to English speakers in the United States with phones running Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the company said.

English speakers in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom will gain access to the assistant next, followed by German speakers in Germany, and the company is working on support for additional languages.

Voice-powered digital assistants have been largely a novelty for consumers since Apple's Siri introduced the technology to the masses in 2011. But many in the industry believe the technology will soon become one of the main ways users interact with devices, and Apple, Google and Amazon.com Inc are racing to present their assistants to as many people as possible.

“Our goal is to make the Assistant available anywhere you need it,” Gummi Hafsteinsson, product lead for the Google Assistant, wrote in a blog post published on Sunday. “With this update, hundreds of millions of Android users will now be able to try out the Google Assistant.”