Create A Google Assistant App That Use Your Server

The Google Assistant give users their own personal Google that helps them find, organize, and get things done in their world. The main way users interact with the Google Assistant is by carrying on a conversation with it. You can extend the Google Assistant by building apps that let users get things done with your products and services.

In this post, we are going to build a new app for the Google Assistant that will give us the current bitcoin price. The main idea here is to show how to use external services from an Assistant app.

If you prefer a video, you can watch the one below:

and I also wrote a code lab so you could test it on your own with code.

A Bitcoin Info Action!

 In the past few weeks I worked (20% of the time) on this new assistant application that will give you interesting information about Bitcoin.

Here is an example of what you can do:

• The price of bitcoin
• Market cap
• Blocks count
• Total amount of bitcoins

This is how the conversation looks like on the web simulator.
You open it with the main capabilities that it can provide:

Crypto Currency 101 – #bitcoin

Is it important?

Bitcoin leverage a powerful and new technology. It is not controlled or issued by any one organization (e.g. bank or government). Instead, it is an open network which is managed by its users. In a similar way that email and WhatsApp improved communication by making it fast and cheap, bitcoin is an improvement on existing payment methods which were not designed for the internet era.

What is bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a decentralized, anonymous, digital-only currency that’s lately gotten a lot of public attention. It was originally developed in 2008 and like in any good mystery, someone using the alias “Satoshi Nakamoto” published a paper describing how Bitcoins could work. (There is a very interesting story about this guy too. He must be very smart but, has never come forward to claim ownership, or any part in revenue.) Just one year later, at 2009, they started being traded and mined. In short, bitcoin represents a way to transfer money anonymously and at almost no cost. And since it’s an arbitrary currency with no nationality attached to it, you’re free to exchange it with anyone in the world. Since Bitcoin’s core protocol is viewable by anyone, it has been vetted by thousands of security researchers around the world and has proven to be robust and reliable.