Google's Duplex on the Web is going to the graveyard

Another day - another Google service heads to the holy pastures. Duplex on the Web, a Google service that lets users use the Google Assistant to order food, book movie tickets, and more, is being discontinued. According to an official statement from Google to our good friends at TechCrunch, as of December, Duplex on the Web and any automation features will no longer be supported.

"As we continue to improve the Duplex experience, we’re responding to the feedback we’ve heard from users and developers about how to make it even better," reads part of the statement. "By the end of this year, we’ll turn down Duplex on the Web and fully focus on making AI advancements to the Duplex voice technology that helps people most every day."

Google Duplex on the Web was created in 2019 as an add-in to the existing Duplex phone service. It started as a simple automation program that was able to open sites and fill in personal information. The service quickly expanded, and some months later it allowed users to instantly change passwords, check-in for flights, identify discounts, and aid with e-commerce merchant checkout via Google Assistant.

One of the reasons this helpful service is going to the digital graveyard is the sheer amount of AI processing power required for it to work. Duplex on the Web relies on a special crawl bot that crawls the websites of all of Duplex's partners almost constantly to get the latest information.