Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google voice? How do you think they tuned their voice recognition and their translations? Listening to all those free phone calls.
In my experience they still have a crazy amount of tuning to do. The translation is useful maybe 1/4 of the time. It's is what I would call accurate maybe 1/20.
But like Allo, they were never hesitant to say that was the reason for having Google voice and making it free. They needed those millions of hours of voice so that they had the broad diverse base of voices and accents to work with. This is just Google's way of doing things and always have been. Always a little uproar and a week later everyone has forgotten. And two years from now Google can say "but we TOLD you so!"
Honestly, as a developer I don't know if I agree with it or not. If I was in their shoes, it seems like the way to do it. They are honest in what they are doing, but I think its because they know people will forget sooner rather than later.