In the American scientific and technological community, Seattle will occasionally work with Silicon Valley.
In today's hot AI market, Microsoft and Amazon from Seattle are calling Apple and Google out of Silicon Valley.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers' 2017 Global Market Top 100 rankings, Microsoft and Amazon are ranked 3rd and 4th respectively in the world, second only to Apple and Google's parent, Alphabet.
But with the unprecedented cooperation between Microsoft and Amazon, the technology giants from Seattle seem to have mastered the initiative of this technology war.
Not only that, but today Microsoft is still gearing up to accelerate the reserve of AI talent.
The first financial reporter learned that in the past year, the number of personnel in the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence Division has increased rapidly, from the initial 5,000 or so to the current 8,000.
In addition, Microsoft and Amazon have opened up an imaginary space in the field of artificial intelligence. In addition to Microsoft and Amazon, Seattle is also home to the coffee chain Starbucks and industrial giant Boeing.
Microsoft is joining forces with Amazon
At the IT Leaders Summit in April this year, Shen Xiangyang, Microsoft's global executive vice president, head of artificial intelligence and Microsoft research, revealed that the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence Division has more than 7,000 engineers and scientists.
"I still continue to recruit people, because Pony (Ma Huateng) and Robin (Li Yanhong) often dig our people, Jack (Ma Yun) also dig." Faced with Ma Huateng sitting on the side, Shen Xiangyang snarled.
The response from Ma Huateng is that "Tencent has set up a lab in Microsoft (headquarters) in Seattle. Because many people in Microsoft are not willing to leave Seattle, we have a lab next to it, no way, talent is like this."
It is worth mentioning that although it is also a technology company born in Seattle, Microsoft and Amazon seem to be more accustomed to seeing each other as competitors. Amazon, like this year's AWS cloud service with more than $10 billion in revenue, is the old IT company Microsoft Azure. The cloud service platform is desperately chasing the direction.
This time, let Seattle "double male" shake hands and talk, the two major moments: artificial intelligence voice assistant products.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos previously announced on his Twitter homepage: "Alexa has made a new friend." Amazon's voice assistant Alexa's "new friend" is Microsoft's similar artificial intelligence. Product Cortana.
The above-mentioned cooperation is surprising. Although Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Google have already launched their own digital assistants, the four products have not been compatible with each other.
But now the cooperation between Microsoft and Amazon indicates that both parties hope to work together to improve the voice assistant. Specifically, the two cooperation in the field of smart speakers and voice assistants include: on Alexa-equipped devices, users can call Cortana and use Microsoft's office functions; when calling Alexa on Windows 10 and other devices, they can also directly Buy and buy on Amazon and use Alexa's Skills.
Amazon's global vice president and president of Amazon China, Zhang Wenzhao, previously said that the Alexa system has tens of thousands of partners around the world, not only software developers, application developers, but also global smart device manufacturers. Currently, Alexa can provide more than 15,000 functional applications.
Microsoft's Cortana is currently widely used around the world. According to Microsoft's financial report, as of July 30, 2017, Cortana has more than 140 million users.
But for the influence of Alexa and Cortana, there are still some discounts.
Because Amazon's Alexa focuses on the smart home field, and Microsoft's Cortana is more oriented to the professional field, how to combine it is still the focus of the two research.
"Amazon will be at the core of its own technology, and the cooperation between the two will not be too close." Rokid founder and CEO Misa told the First Financial Reporter.
Google, Amazon have long been complaining
Amazon and Google seem to have been complaining for a long time compared to Amazon and Microsoft's "honeymoon" period on artificial intelligence. In its annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in February 2017, Google’s parent company even placed Amazon at the top of all competitors, indicating that both are on cloud computing, search and voice control devices. competition.
Earlier, Google's artificial intelligence product AlphaGo set off a large number of artificial intelligence booms around the world by challenging Go players. In this regard, even Shen Xiangyang also said that on the artificial intelligence IQ, the friend's artificial intelligence product AlphaGo did a good job.
With the recent "YouTube Incident" exploding, the contradiction between Amazon and Google is becoming more and more open.
It is reported that YouTube's parent company Google decided not to provide YouTube services to Echo Show. The Echo Show is the latest Echo speaker launched by Amazon in May. In this regard, Amazon and Google each hold a word, Amazon believes that this move hurts users, and Google said that deploying YouTube on Echo Show violates the terms of service.
The first landing product of Amazon's Alexa speech recognition system is the Echo series of devices. Echo, which carries Alexa in 2016, once occupied 88% of the smart speaker market. But Google quickly released Google Home after Amazon. The product successfully grabbed the next 10% market share in the fourth quarter of last year after it was officially shipped in November.
It is reported that at the October conference, Google will also release a mini version of the Google Home smart speaker, and this product is directly against the Amazon Echo Dot regardless of price or style.
Compared to Google's gaze, Microsoft is just getting ready to let go in the smart voice assistant market. Given the power of Windows Phone, Microsoft has shown a more open stance in the field of artificial intelligence. Microsoft plans to join Harman Kardon to launch Cortana-based smart speakers, and also wants to integrate its own voice assistant into more devices such as cars and thermostats.
However, Microsoft and Amazon have opened up an imaginary space in the field of artificial intelligence.
In addition to teaming up with Amazon, Microsoft may also join Starbucks in Seattle in artificial intelligence. After all, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has just joined Starbucks' board of directors this year.
Boeing, the industrial giant born in Seattle, is also a potential partner of Microsoft's artificial intelligence. As one of Microsoft's key customers, the Microsoft Azure cloud platform won Boeing's order last year.
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