Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#131

Post by ryanSrich » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #66

16bytes wrote: post #63

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 tra…

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#132

Post by yelloo » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

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?

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#133

Post by haerra » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #119

FireBeyond wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious who you think is actually out there laboring under the assumption that healthcare becomes absolutely, and literally, free?

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).

Uhm, I guess that you have some inner frustrations, as I have yet to meet someone who thinks that healtcare is literally free.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#134

Post by killjoywashere » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

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.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#135

Post by newbie578 » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #26

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#136

Post by xwolfi » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #119

FireBeyond wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious who you think is actually out there laboring under the assumption that healthcare becomes absolutely, and literally, free?

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).

[flagged]

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#137

Post by ignoramous » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

alberth wrote: post #122

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 Communic…

> Everyone is wanting to take on Twilio.

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

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#138

Post by armagon » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #86

GekkePrutser wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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.

And it is different for every skill (for Alexa, anyway).

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

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#139

Post by nsriv » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #124

bombcar wrote: post #7

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”.

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#140

Post by ArcturianDeath » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

pinko wrote: post #71

tinus_hn wrote: post #49

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!

You may not realize, but "gyp" is a bigoted ethnic slur. Please don't use it here or anywhere.

So you flagged their comment for something you aint and that wasnt directed at anyone? How infantile. Now, no one knows what they said.