Google quietly debuts Chatbase, a chatbot analytics platform

Just ahead of Google's I/O event kicking off later today, some details have leaked out about a new service that Google is launching for developers that are building chatbots. TechCrunch has learned that Google has developed a new service called Chatbase, which provides analytics and suggestions for how to "fix" bot experiences to make them better for users. A source tells us that the service is being hatched out of Google's Area 120 internal incubator, and it was developed by Ofer Ronen and Hari Rajagopalan, both of whom came to Google by way of previous acquisitions. Chatbase appears to have been in a private beta with about a dozen companies, including the chat app Viber (which launched its own foray into chatbots late last year), eBay, JustFab and Unicef. There are no screenshots on the Chatbase website, although there are options for developers to sign up for access, which leads me to think it might be one of the items getting announced today.