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Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

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Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#31

Post by endisneigh »

One thing I considered doing long ago was creating middleware to use NaturallySpeaking via an API and noticed in their license agreement they have the following:

   A license for the Software
   Package does not allow Licensee to use the Software 
   Package on a
   server.
I'm curious how well this would hold up in a court. I only mention this because Nuance is a pretty litigious organization. I imagine they were bought pretty much for the patents.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#32

Post by Spooky23 »

someperson wrote: post #11

Several years ago I used a Nuance product named Dragon NaturallySpeaking that had speech-to-text capability and adds verbal accessibility features on Windows platforms (eg, say "Open Word", speak your document aloud, then "Close Word") I had no idea they had enough sales to justify a $20 billion valuation. Though to be fair, Microsoft tends to acquire companies at high price tags (eg, Skype, LinkedIn, Minecraft) comp…

Nuance OEMs and sells backend systems for IVRs and all sorts of products. You probably interact with their stuff routinely and not even know it.

They also bought up a lot of small companies and products from bigger companies and own a lot of patents.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#33

Post by DrBazza »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #19
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”.

Siri is brain-damaged. I am constantly disappointed with how stupid she is compared to Alexa and the gap is widening. I try to keep things as simple as possible with her because she always disappoints me. I wish Apple would open up a tiny bit of those 200 billion in cash reserves on improving Siri.

You clearly haven't had the pleasure of trying to use voice control in a Mercedes-Benz. It makes Siri and Cortana seem telepathic by comparison.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#34

Post by tapper »

Plenty of blind people would get behind this if it happened. https://t.co/vQIch9PLiW The skype thing was a clusterfuck. I loved skype casts and they fucked it all. Discorde is OK now, but dam does it make me feel old. I join a server and join a VC and here a bunch of 13 year olds. I have to leave because I am 38 and it's creepy to be talking to 13 14 yearolds on the internets at my age lol I made a server for tech nerds and people who like OpenWrt. https://discord.gg/KuNhWzvp5S.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#35

Post by Godel_unicode »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #13

This is really, really unfortunate. One of the last on-device speech companies is being bought out and moved into Microsoft's cloud division. Expect nobody to be willing to sell you speech recognition without a cloud subscription now.

C+AI makes products that can work offline though (yes it has the words Azure and cloud, no they aren't required):

https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/with-azure-percept-microsoft-...

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#36

Post by lunixbochs »

bitwize wrote: post #12
struct wrote: post #4

What does Microsoft get out of this? They already have TTS and deep learning transcription, what technical capabilities does Nuance have that they don't have already (or can't develop for substantially less than $20B?)

Probably a crapton of patents for voice recognition. Also, if you cannot operate a keyboard and must communicate by speech to operate a computer, it's pretty much Dragon NaturallySpeaking or GTFO. Integrating NaturallySpeaking tech into Windows would be a huge boon and further cement Windows as the os to have if you have disabilities.

I have users who have intentionally switched their speech engine from the latest version of Dragon to Talon, for both dictation and commands. Talon is cross platform and directly targets accessibility use cases (far more than just speech input).

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#37

Post by mkl »

glutamate wrote: post #8
adler0901 wrote: post #3

Hopefully they'll fix Nuance's terrible website and support.

Hopefully they will fix a couple of bugs in Dragon as well. I really would like them to have a release focused on bug fixes rather than greater accuracy

More than a couple. It's the most unstable and unreliable program I use on a regular basis.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#38

Post by tonyedgecombe »

endisneigh wrote: post #31

One thing I considered doing long ago was creating middleware to use NaturallySpeaking via an API and noticed in their license agreement they have the following: A license for the Software Package does not allow Licensee to use the Software Package on a server. I'm curious how well this would hold up in a court. I only mention this because Nuance is a pretty litigious organization. I imagine they were bought pretty m…

That seems quite common, I looked at a few PDF products a couple of years ago and they all wanted to license server installations individually whereas for workstations they are happy to offer a redistribution license.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#39

Post by mikro2nd »

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.

Years ago, deep in the fine-print of the Skype ToU, was buried a clause in which anything you discussed via Skype granted to MS a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, etc. license to anything mentioned. Is that still there? (Haven't used Skype in many a long year, myself.) I always wondered why that clause didn't render Skype unusable for any business or prospective business conversation.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#40

Post by skrowl »

Spooky23 wrote: post #27
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”.

Siri is a train wreck. I have a $1200 phone where it takes more time to do “hey Siri FaceTime so-and-so” than to navigate. It just sits and spins.

Siri is especially bad when compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, both of which are light years ahead.

Usual Apple reliance on their fans buying their devices no matter how bad the software is.

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