Frank is always pressed for time. He has spent almost a decade as the head of a retail store for a large chain. Over the last few years, he has been steadily handed over the reins of four other stores in the chain. His knowledge and expertise are beyond doubt. The problem is that while work has multiplied several folds and his responsibilities have grown, he still has only 24 hours in a workday.

Siri has been a part of Apple's iPhone since 2011. The human voice is one of the most personal and unique aspects of every individual, as well as one of the most sought after means of interacting with our devices. Voice-based interfaces have, in fact, been promised as the next big breakthrough for several decades. Until recently, though, they've been much more future promise than current reality. Even with the much heralded introduction of Apple's Siri back in October of 2011, spoken interactions with computing devices have often been more comical than helpful. Beginning with Amazon's Alexa, however--part of their Echo series of devices--the notion of natural human-style interactions with computing devices is starting to take hold.

Google's Android dominates the smartphone market overall, but Apple has attracted a disproportionate share of high-end users -- and consequently an outsize share of smartphone profits. At a Tuesday event, Google unveiled a two-pronged strategy to change that. Part one was the Pixel, the first smartphone that will be designed and manufactured by Google. Google is betting that building its own phone will allow it to offer the same kind of seamless user experience Apple provides its own users. But the second prong of Google's strategy is more original and received more attention on Tuesday.