Making the world a better place, one Google Assistant request at a time
The Verge has coverage of a new feature on Google Assistant that lets users easily donate, by voice, to a racial justice non-profit. While tech companies have been offering commission-free donations in a wide variety of channels as part of their general social good work, this feature is unique in that it routes a general user donation request (”Donate to racial justice”) to a specific (US) non-profit. This raises the immediate and contentious question of how Google will determine which non-profit should receive user donations for the issues they work on. There’s competition in the nonprofit world between organizations working on the exact same issues, and not every nonprofit is equally effective.
Still, this feature is exciting in that it significantly cuts down on the friction between plain-language user intent (”I want to support racial justice efforts”) and outcome (making a donation to a specific, well-regarded group). Many civic search queries, such as “I need food stamps”, don’t immediately translate to relevant local resources. It’d be great to see more work to appropriately route broad civic queries to specific outcomes.
